


Stitching in the Ditch

by JustAnotherGhostwriter



Series: The Patchwork 'Verse [1]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Nanny, Chronic Pain, Edward is a good big brother, Found Family, Gen, Happy endings do exist, Hurt/Comfort, References to Child Abuse, References to dubious research ethics and very minor animal abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2020-11-23 03:04:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 26,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20885084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustAnotherGhostwriter/pseuds/JustAnotherGhostwriter
Summary: Ed thought calls on his (slightly dubious) skills as a child-minder would be limited to his job nannying Elicia. That assumption is proved false when a new opportunity to further his uni research gives him two unexpected new friends. Of course, because Ed's luck is the way it is, that's not the only unexpected surprise that is flung his way, but it is the nicest one by a very wide margin.





	1. Big

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AVMabs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AVMabs/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Edward Elric's Guide to Quilting a Patchwork Family](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17190938) by [AVMabs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AVMabs/pseuds/AVMabs). 

> Somehow, here I am again - writing another fic based on a fic. 
> 
> In my defence, the original fic was so absolutely _wonderful_ that I couldn't help but fall so in love with it I needed to add something to this universe. And, thanks to the lovely AVMabs giving me permission, I was able to do so. Of course, this was supposed to be posted a _month_ ago, but then life bit chunks out of me and made finding time to write absolutely impossible for a while. By the time I got the first chapter written, it was close enough to the third of October that I thought, "Why not break into the FMA fandom _on FMA day_?" To make a... statement. Or something. 
> 
> Please read the [original work](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17190938) before reading this. Not only is the context necessary, but the fic is amazing and full of wholesome good feels.

Winry and Al were usually the ones to go on about inanimate objects giving off emotions and shit like that, but Ed couldn't deny that the old, sprawling house in front of him looked distinctly sad. It had been built for a large, grand family that threw regular large, grand parties, and the university using it intermittently for mostly-single visiting professors had slowly taken its toll on the place. But Ed wasn't there to admire architecture – he was there for the lonely professor currently staying inside the house, still a little in awe that said man was now just a door away from him. Mustang had accidentally let slip who Cambridge was getting to fill Marcoh's position while the older man took a much-needed, but apparently contested, sabbatical, and as soon as the name was out of his mouth Ed was on his case about setting up a one-on-one meeting with the guest professor. And, although Mustang had been his usual patronising, condescending bastard self, dangling Ed's desired meeting in front of him like a toy before a cat, he'd come through in the end. In a big way, Ed had to begrudgingly admit to himself, although he’d never say as much out loud.

Of course, he thought suddenly as he rang the trilling front doorbell, Mustang could have been yanking his chain when he’d said that he’d secured Ed a private meeting. It would be crueller than anything the man had _ever _done to Ed before, but there was enough nervousness mixed in with Ed’s excited expectation that the possibility suddenly niggled in his brain, giving him visions of the door being opened only to have it shut in his face again in indifferent anger, leaving him to traipse back home in humiliated disappointment and – 

Something bowled into him with enough force to not only knock him clean off his feet, but to send him skidding a few inches across the grass. Before he could even properly come to terms with the fact that he was on his back on the ground, whatever hit him was suddenly on top of him, bruising and winding him even further. The creature was large, and it was incredibly fury, and it was licking his face with hot gusto. 

“Alexander!” A male voice cried. “Down! You – _Nina_. You _have _to keep better control of that dog! _Alexander_! Heel! Stop! Come here!” 

Able to breathe again, Ed shoved the excited furball off of him with some difficulty so he could sit up and face the fact that one of the greatest biological minds was standing in the doorway watching him get accosted  mercilessly by a dog. 

“I’m so sorry,” Professor Tucker said, looking harried and embarrassed and wild-haired and quite unlike the put-together pictures usually attached to his dissertations. “_Alexander – _I apologise...”

“That’s okay, Professor Tucker,” Ed said, trying hard not to blush in mortification as he held Alexander at bay as best he could. The dog was desperately trying to lick his ears. “It... happens more often than you would think.” 

Of course, Riza’s dog – the main culprit of Ed’s usual canine humiliation – was only about one fifth the size of this current foe. Ed wasn’t sure if that made the current situation better or worse. 

“_Nina_. Go and fetch your dog. And make him _behave_! You have to _train _him.” 

With a jolt of shock, Ed realised the person being addressed was a girl around Elicia’s age with wide, blue eyes and long hair tied in a haphazard pony tail at the base of her head. She hurried forward, calling the dog’s name with as much authority as a small child could and, when all Alexander did was turn and pant adoringly at her, she flung her arms around his neck and tried to wrestle him off of Ed. With the dog suitably distracted, Ed wormed out from under his mass and quickly got to his feet, taking a few steps away for good measure, hoping he wasn’t as rumpled and dirty and full of dog hair and slobber as he felt. 

“Edward Elric, I presume?” Tucker said, extending a hand, and that, at least, was one thing to go Ed’s way that morning. 

“Yeah. Uh, yes, sir. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Professor.” Ed shook his hand very, very carefully, wondering, as always, what the other person thought of gripping something that was pretty obviously not-flesh beneath the glove. 

But Ed’s slightly grudging curiosity was not fulfilled, this time – Tucker broke the handshake without so much as a double-take, let alone any emotions or hard looks that Ed could decode. “Come on in, Edward. Roy told me enough about you that I’m curious about this. I hope tha– Oh. Nina, stay outside while Daddy talks to his visitor, okay? Keep Alexander in check. Play together, or something.”

The little girl nodded, looking slightly dejected and contrite, her arms still wrapped around the dog’s large white neck. Some instinct or skill that had been honed over the month’s he’d been Elicia’s nanny kicked in, and as Tucker led him inside Ed made sure to catch Nina’s eye so he could grin and wink at her. Her expression transformed to a smile of delight like the sun peeking out from the clouds on a rainy day. She waved at him, cheerily, even as her father closed the door behind Ed with a strong click.

“Would you like tea?” Tucker asked, and Ed tried not to stare at the chaos that greeted him inside the house. From the way things were stacked and sprawled on every surface and even the floor, he would never have guessed the house was as large as it was; the mess was something Ed frequently saw in tiny dormrooms or closet-sized flats.

“Uh, yes – thanks.”

Luckily, Tucker had seemingly anticipated his answer, and Ed was spared having to sit awkwardly by himself in the sitting room that Tucker led him to by the steaming teapot already wedged in-between books and papers on the coffee table.

“Sorry about the mess,” Tucker said, suddenly looking sheepish, nearly upending the spoon of sugar in his one hand as he tried to gather the papers together with his free hand. “The University sends somebody once a week but, uh, in-between those days... I should have become better at housekeeping since my wife left us two years ago but I haven’t quite managed that, yet. And Nina’s still too young to take up the mantle of adding a woman’s touch to things.”

It was probably meant to be a joke, but Ed couldn’t force a laugh at either the sudden, jarring knowledge that Tucker’s wife had run off without him and their kid, or the insinuation that Nina would soon be the one housekeeping the place. The most he could do was give a wan sort of grin, wishing he’d paid more attention to the science community gossip so he’d have been prepared for the fact that Tucker had been married at _all, _let alone abandoned. 

The second streak of luck that morning: Tucker didn’t seem to notice the painful quality to Ed’s smile. Instead, he handed the now-complete tea to Ed, sat back on the couch, and smiled faintly. “So, Edward. Tell me about  _your _ research and how I can help, hmm?” 

That was all the opening Ed needed, and his enthusiastic launch into his material quickly turned into a back-and-forth between him and Tucker of the likes that he’d only imagined in his wildest, happiest daydreams of meeting the man. Xenotransplantation wasn’t _very _connected Ed’s chosen field, but he knew enough to more than hold his own in the conversation. And what he didn’t know going in, he picked up on quickly enough, frequently halting Tucker’s narratives for explanations and sudden hypotheses of his own. By the end of their agreed three hours they’d barely touched on what Ed had set out to ask him, but had delved into things he’d never known would make him excited, and his whole body felt abuzz with delight and possibility and wonder.

“None of the organs have been transplanted into humans yet, have they?”

“No, not yet. Doctor Wu and his associates are still congratulating themselves on the fact that they were able to grow human organs inside the pigs. And Nakauchi is still attempting to get permission from the Japanese government for his proposed experiments of injecting human stem cells into rodent embryos. They’re both still playing it incredibly safe and congratulating themselves on tiny victories,” Tucker replied with a slightly sardonic smile.

“Still,” Ed said, with a little laugh. “The fact that they’re growing human organs in animals is... Remarkable,” he settled for, although his knee-jerk description was much more colourful.

Tucker had been as animated as Ed in the conversation, as excited to share ideas and discuss concepts. Now, however, he stilled, and leaned forward to regard Ed with an odd look. “We’ve discussed some of the benefits of chimeras,” he said, slowly.

“And the rest of them are obvious,” Ed added, glibly, but Tucker didn’t break his intensely calculating look.

“What do you think of their hesitance to take it to human trials, Ed?” Tucker asked, quietly.

Ed shrugged a little. “Ethics and caution are there for reasons. Sure, it sucks that people are suffering because of the transplantable organ shortages, but we also don’t wanna cause more problems than we’re fixing, right?”

“And those who are desperate enough for organs to volunteer? Who would die either way? Who have the funding for the best medical care?”

“It’s kinda the same as experimental cancer treatments, I guess,” Ed said, a little uncomfortable, a little contemplative. “But, also, even the experimental drug trials have had more work and time put into them than chimeras have to date.”

“I wouldn’t take you for one to be cautious,” Tucker mused.

Ed grinned. “That’s why they haven’t put me in charge of anything, yet,” he joked.

Instead of laughing, the professor leaned forward even more, looking even more intrigued about something. “Not yet,” he murmured, softly. “But before long... You’re the sort I’d want on my team to help with my... uh... less-enthusiastically backed research.”

“You mean the...” Ed hesitated. “I mean, I read that... a few years ago you were looking into the benefits of... uh... the _opposite _kind of chimera? Animal organs into humans, instead of the other way around?” 

“What did you think of that?” Tucker asked, softly. 

Ed hesitated then said, very carefully, “There wasn’t really enough detail in the reports for all the benefits of that method to be fully explained.” 

Tucker was still eyeing him steadily, his look difficult to read as the light reflected off his glasses. “It’s uni hols now,” he said, slowly, and Ed nodded automatically, a little startled at the change of topic. “How about you come back until your classes start up again, Ed? I’ve lugged my entire personal library and _all _my research notes with me – too precious to leave a single book behind. One of my eccentricities, I suppose – and I think... I really do get the sense that you will benefit from them in a way that few others will.”

Ed’s heart leapt and then did victorious cartwheels across his chest. “_Seriously_? I would – Professor! _Thank you_.” 

Tucker’s smile was thin but genuine. “I’ll be busy in my lab for most of the time, I’m afraid. My research findings are due the weekend before uni starts, and last year’s presentation... Well. I’m very much on my last chance, here. Every single thing, from my professorship to my funding to even this job at Cambridge is riding on me being approved by this panel. So I’ll be... very dedicated to my work. But there will also be times, here and there, to discuss things over tea breaks. And I truly do think I’ll benefit from those conversations as much as you will, Edward. Your mind... I was not expecting this, despite all of Roy’s insistences...” 

The glow from being thus praised by  _Professor Shou Tucker _ and the excitement of being given access to his  _private library _ and research notes were both strong enough for Ed to completely miss the insinuation about Mustang actually being nice about him to other people. “I have work in the afternoons from three, but my mornings are all free,” he said, feeling like he was vibrating in joy and the possibilities this could open for him. And, indirectly, for  _Al_ . 

“Mornings are great. Nina will be in school, too, so the place will be quieter.” Tucker’s expression once more didn’t flicker as he shook Ed’s hand. “It really will be a pleasure, Ed.” 

*

The conversations over tea and toast and, sometimes, more substantial meals, that Ed and Tucker had over the next few weeks are always interesting, if not always entirely relevant to Ed’s own research. Still, he was a big believer in gaining knowledge of all sorts, and thought that those that blinkered themselves only to their current focus were _idiots_. So Ed lapped up all the information he could, questioning where he could and, more often than not, letting Tucker use him as a sort of sounding board for the deadline-bound research that was still causing him so much frustration and stress.

Most of the time, however, it was just Ed, Tucker’s extensive library and Alexander the dog, who, after his normally enthusiastic greetings in the mornings, curled up meekly at Ed’s feet as he sat and read and followed Ed around every time he moved until the sunshine of the household came back from school and dog dutifully moved to shadow her, instead. It took Ed more than a week to realise that when he couldn’t hear Nina singing or talking to the dog in the garden outside, it was because she was skulking around the library, peering at him around shelves as she read or coloured. This was more a testament to how absorbed he got when he read than her exceptional espionage skills, but he had to admit that she could turn from boisterous and bouncy to quiet and watchful eerily fast.

It took another day for him to realise that he couldn’t really recall a time when she hadn’t come straight home from school instead of heading to a friends’, and that the only young voice he’d heard around the large house had been hers. Again, some combination of being a big brother and being a nanny overcame his usually questionable empathy skills enough for him to push away the books and scrawled notes in front of him when next he caught sight of her trying to be sneaky about peering around the bookshelf at him. 

“Hey, Nina,” he called, casually, stretching so that his neck popped in a very satisfying way. She ducked out of sight with a little gasp, and Ed grinned to himself. “Hey, what? Don’t you wanna talk to me? That’s sad.” Slowly, her face appeared again, a bit more peeking out this time, eyes slightly narrowed as if assessing whether he was really sad she didn’t want to talk to him. “Hey,” he said with an easy smile. “I only bite people on Tuesdays.” 

“Today _is _Tuesday,” she said, eyes widening a bit. 

Ed pretended to frown deeply. “Huh. Then maybe you should be scared of me,” he said, mock seriously, nodding his head. “I can bite  _hard_ .” As he’d hoped, Nina giggled slightly, and stepped out fully from behind the bookcase. Most of her hair was out of the big scrunchie it had apparently been tied in at some stage, falling around her face in the same sort of disarray the house was in. “What’s up?” 

She eyed the books in front of him. “Daddy says not to bother when people are working.”  Her voice was very solemn. 

Ed made a big show of shutting the books in front of him with smart snaps, and Nina’s face lit up even more as she scuttled closer, Alexander trailing dutifully behind.  Months with Elicia made it easy to converse with Nina, who didn’t need half as much coaxing out of her shell as Elicia had in the beginning. She was a bright child, both in warm personality and in intelligence, and Ed found himself laughing as often as he made her laugh. She didn’t pout when he gently told her he had to get back to work, but instead dragged her colouring book and crayons to the floor beside him, content to quietly continue in his presence. Alexander curled beside her on the floor, but seemed to make sure his tail covered at least one of Ed’s feet. 

It was a tiny bit harder to leave that afternoon. 

* 

“Eeeeeddddd.” He _knew _that tone; knew what kind of trouble it could spell. So he looked to Nina with wary suspicion, not gentling his expression at her wide, innocent blue eyes. 

“Whaaaaatttt?” he parried back. 

“You get a break time, don’t you? We get break at school.” 

“This isn’t –” Ed started, then paused, considered, and changed his mind. “I guess I do. Why?” 

Nina shimmied closer until her chin was resting on his shoulder, her eyes still wide and innocent and pleading. “Next break, will you play with me?  _Please_ ?” 

“Do you want me to hide things for you to find, again?” he asked, unable to stop a smile twitching across his face. They’d found lots of little ways for him to amuse her without breaking his concentration, for the times when she grew temporarily bored of drawing or colouring. Giving her treasure to hunt was one of her favourites. 

But Nina shook her head. “I want to play ball, this time,” she said, tone pleading. “Outside.  _Please_ , Ed? Just for a  _little _ while. A really, really little while. Alexander can only  _catch _ the ball, not  _throw _ it. I wanna practise  _catching _ it, ‘swell, so Amy and Tessa– ”

Her eyes dropped to the carpet, but Ed had had suspicions long before the current slipup. “Nina,” he said, trying to keep his tone gentle and encouraging. “Are there any girls – or boys, I suppose – who play with you at school? Or... after school? On Saturdays?” Nina silently shook her head and mumbled something too soft for Ed to catch. “Pardon?”

“All my friends are at home,” Nina said, softly. “Everybody here – everybody – they were all friends since start of prep and they don’t...” 

“It’s hard moving schools in the middle of the year, huh?” he said, still trying to be gentle, and Nina’s head nodded vigorously, eyes still trained on the floor, head still resting against his shoulder. “Well,” he said, brightly, “we’ll just have to get you catching like a pro. Make all those other kids go, ‘Wow, Nina! So _cool_!’ Show them how awesome you are, huh?” 

She beamed up at him at once. “Right!” 

“And not just with catching, kiddo. You can show them how cool you are in lots of other ways. Like still being kind even when they’re not. Lending them your crayons and stuff. You understand?” She thought hard about it for a moment, then nodded, slowly. “Why don’t you think of ways you can show them how cool you are while I finish this page, and then we’ll go practise catch, okay?”

“Ed?” she asked, a few moments later, so out of the blue that he looked at her mid-sentence. She was playing with bits of her hair, looking at him with worry but determination in her face. “You’re my friend? I – I made you – you think I’m cool?”

“I’m definitely your friend,” he promised. “And I _know _you’re one of the coolest people I’ve ever met.” 

“Thank you,” she said, oddly grown-up despite the grin of utter childish delight on her face. 

“You’re welcome,” he replied, trying to be proper, but ruining it with a laugh. 

* 

“Woah. That’s not a happy face.” Nina’s chin wobbled even harder as she looked at him, hands clutching a piece of paper. Ed hurriedly dumped the lot of books he’d just taken from the shelves onto the table that had become _his _over the past few weeks and then crouched in front of Nina. “What’s wrong?” 

“I don’t know how,” she sniffed, and Alexander, ever-present by her side, whined. 

“Don’t know how to what, Nina?” 

“Show and tell,” she hiccoughed, handing him the scrumpled paper. Ed glanced at it briefly and saw it contained instructions for a show and tell project that was due the next day. “What do I say that’s _cool_?” she said, sounding distraught. 

Well done, Ed. You’ve given a five-year-old a total anxiety complex.  _Shit_ . 

“All of you is cool,” he said, as firmly as he could, wishing Al was there to repair the damage he’d done without meaning to. “We can think of something to talk about. What about... uh... your colouring and drawing!” 

Nina shook her head, sniffing hard and rubbing at her eyes. “Not good enough.” 

“What about... Alexander! I’ll bet nobody’s seen a dog as big and as fluffy as him before.” 

Nina considered this. “Could I take him to school?”

“Er... No. You’ll have to just take pictures.” Her face fell again. “But you can take nice ones!” Ed added, hurriedly. “Ones with him in different... Uh, I dunno. Poses. And places. In a hat?” 

“I don’t _wanna _just take pictures,” she said, tremulously. “I wanna take _something _people can touch and see there. Pictures are _boring_.” 

“Okay,” Ed said, patiently, wracking his brain. “Isn’t there something of Alexander’s you can take with you? His... favourite toy, or something? Some of his fur? That’s already fallen out – don’t go cutting any off him,” Ed added, hurriedly, suddenly foreseeing a horrible conclusion to his suggestion. 

Nina shrugged, clearly not impressed, and Ed sighed a little. “Why don’t we think about it a bit together, huh?” Another lacklustre shrug, but she followed Ed back to the desk without a word, getting out her own book to read as Ed settled down with more of Tucker’s research notes and accompanying library books. 

He’d been so eager to read these just a few moments ago, head spinning and whirling with the new realisation that Tucker’s notes seemed to be implying that he’d known somebody who  _had _ conducted a human trial two years ago. He couldn’t be absolutely sure, because the notes were vague and slightly coded, but there was  _something _ there that pointed to other mentions that he’d made in the notes Ed had gone to fetch; things that pointed to the conversations he and Tucker had had. Especially that first one, and the man’s intensity when he asked Ed’s view on trial ethics. He’d mostly been ignoring Tucker’s personal research except in the places where it correlated with his own, but he’d found himself drawn closer and closer to what the man was working on by curiosity and exposure and the growing feeling that he was  _missing something _ in those notes. Something big. Something that Tucker was trying to match, if not exceed, with his current work that was due for review very soon. 

But that excitement and single-minded drive to find the answers had dimmed with Nina’s despondent arrival back from school, and despite her silence, Ed found he couldn’t concentrate on Tucker’s notes  _or _ the accompanying library books. After just fifteen minutes, Ed had to concede defeat, and he closed the books with a sigh, trying to bottle down the frustration he felt before he unfairly put it on Nina. 

“So.” He forced a smile for her. “Have you thought of anything?” 

She shook her head, mutely, but then looked up at him with a furrowed brow. “_Why _ can’t I take Alexander to school, Ed?” Her tone was pleading and demanding at the same time. 

Ed made sure all his previous irritation was in check before he answered. “For a few reasons. You get to school on the bus, and dogs aren’t allowed on buses, unless they’re specially trained dogs. Like seeing eye dogs. And training dogs for that takes years and years – Alexander can’t be trained in time for this project,” he added, quickly, seeing her mouth open and pre-emptively answering the presumed next question. “Also, all the kids in the class will be too busy trying to pet Alexander. They won’t do their work. That will make your teacher very cross. And Alexander will be too excited to sit still – it’s a new place, with new smells. he runs out the class and gets lost... Do you understand?” 

Nina pouted for a moment, but then nodded, turning her eyes to her crayons. But then, suddenly, she looked back up at Ed. “What about Alexander’s brothers and sisters?” 

“I think the same problems apply to them, too, Nina.” 

But Nina shook her head. “No. They’re not the same. They’re... Come see!” 

She grabbed Ed’s hand and tugged him impatiently down the hallways until they reached the side of the house that Ed had never been into, because it was where Tucker had turned the rooms into his labs. He voiced his hesitation, but it was ignored – Nina pushed open a door with ease and then stood on her tippytoes to turn on the light, still clutching Ed’s hand. The room was stacked with more books and a few tables and a lone microscope, but what caught the eye at once was the shelves of jars, each holding embryos in various stages of growth. Some appeared to be empty save for the solution, but Ed had a sneaking suspicion they were filled of specimens too small to see from that far away. 

“These are Alexander’s brothers and sisters,” Nina said. Even though her voice was quiet, it carried a little _too _well in the room. She was steady, but she was also clutching at Ed rather tightly. “Daddy got Alexander’s mummy and daddy to help him with his work. He used all their children to help.” 

Ed’s skin crawled at the term  _children_ used in the context of the floating things in the jars. Tucker had bred dogs so he could – Shit.  _Shit_ . And not only had he  _kept _ a few of the almost-puppies in jars, but he’d brought those jars  _across the country _ with him. As much as Ed knew it was difficult for many reasons to get access to stem cells and embryos alike for research, this method of doing things... He was very sure at least several animal rights organisations would  _very _ vehemently disapprove. 

“Alexander was the only one in his mummy’s tummy, and Daddy said that I could have him. Because I was sad that Mummy had gone away without me.” Ed had absolutely nothing to say to fill the silence that came after that, too busy staring at the jars with mixed emotions and less incredulity towards the fact that Tucker had known somebody who had attempted an illegal, secret human organ trial. After all, if this was what the man travelled with, the leap to him knowing a few ethically grey people was not a large one to make. “Can I take these for show and tell?” 

“Uh...” How did he say this in a way that didn’t disappoint her? “No, Nina. I don’t think that taking these is a good idea.” 

“I’ll be careful not to break them!” she promised. 

“I know. I know you’ll be super careful. But what if somebody _else_ breaks it? Or what if one of the other kids gets scared?” Most of them, Ed knew from hanging around small children quite a bit recently, would find something this morbid absolutely _fascinating_. But not all would. And he didn’t want Nina getting in trouble. It would ostracise her even more, and would further confuse her about her dad and the work he did, especially if Tucker was called in to mediate the situation by an upset teacher or parent. It took neither a genius nor a man with Ed’s personal experience with fathers to pick up that Tucker was a brilliant scientist, but clumsy and clueless when it came to single fatherhood. “Remember how I said being kind and _considerate _to everybody is very cool? Remember what I said _considerate _means?”

“Being careful with feelings. Even if you think it’s stupid to feel that way, you don’t say.” That... wasn’t _exactly _how he’d put it, but it was close enough he only hummed in agreement. “Ed? Do _you _think the embeeohs are cool?”

“Embryos. And, yeah, I think they’re pretty cool, kid.” Nina nodded, sagely, and let Ed lead switch of the light, lead her outside and close the door behind them. “Now we just gotta find something else to show the class. Okay, hmmm.” They began strolling back to the library, Nina’s hand still in his. “What about your hair? I’ll bet nobody else has hair as long as yours – it’s like... what’s that fairytale girl with the long hair? Like her. You could do it in something different than the pony you usually wear.” That was _always _falling out by the time she got home, he didn’t add. “Add pretty barrettes and things?” 

But Nina’s face had gone oddly closed off, and she didn’t respond to Ed’s suggestion at all, clearly highly uncomfortable. Surprised at her reaction but not wanting to push, Ed backtracked and tried a few other brainstorming ideas. All of them were received better than the hair idea had been, but were ultimately still shot down. 

“Daddy says my blood is special?” Nina finally suggested. “Not lots of people have blood like I do. Mum does. I have both A and B in my blood, and they’ve got a minus!” 

Ed chuckled. “Kid, I think you’re onto something. But you are  _not _ allowed to spray blood on everybody in class, okay?” Nina giggled, and they began to plot her show and tell in earnest. 

*

Four days later, when Nina came to find him after school, her hands held a hairbrush and an assortment of smaller, coloured hairbands. When he asked her about them, she avoided eye contact and only shrugged and continued colouring, as though regretting bringing them with her and wanting to erase her decision by pretending the objects didn’t exist.

“Do you want to redo your pony?” Ed coaxed when they took a juice break together.

Nina hesitated for another beat, and then blurted, very fast, “Mummy used to plait my hair. In two plaits. But Daddy doesn’t know how. He can only do a pony like me.”

“Okay,” Ed said, slowly, still lost from where her mind was focused. He’d suspected that either Tucker or Nina herself did Nina’s hair every day, and that that was possibly the reason it was always falling out all over the place.

“You have a plait in your hair,” she said, her eyes almost impossibly wide and blue and innocent and trusting and, Ed realised with a sudden jolt, _yearning_. That yearning jerked something old and painful in his chest. 

“Yeah, I do.” 

“Can you plait mine? Please?” There was too much hope there; too much steady faith. 

He had to take a breath before he replied. “Sure, kiddo. Come over here.” 

She all but launched herself into his lap, and Ed took exquisite care taking out her messy scrunchy and then brushing her long, brown strands. Plaiting had started out as physical therapy; just one of the many exercises with pieces of rope Granny and Winry had asked him to do to get used to the Automail arm. He’d gotten good at it, though, and when his hair had grown... But even though he’d been doing it blind behind his head for years, he was still nervous once he’d parted Nina’s hair into two even sections and took up the one in his fingers. 

“Let me know if I’m hurting, okay?” The thing was, he had to be so careful that her hair, longer than his, didn’t get caught in the Automail. The thing was, he couldn’t _really _feel with that arm, so he wouldn’t _really _be sure how much pressure he was exerting. The thing was, getting all that wrong on his own scalp was fine, but hurting Nina... 

“Okay,” Nina agreed, fully at ease, without a doubt in the world. 

Slowly, very carefully, Ed began to plait. It took three and a half tries in total, but he was satisfied with the final result. Nina was over the moon, and wouldn’t stop spinning so that her twin plaits swished around her, causing Alexander to bark and bound around the room in befuddled but enthusiastic comraderee. Tucker walked in during one of her pirouettes, and the distracted look that had been on his face melted to pale-faced shock when he caught sight of her hairstyle. Ed would have thought the reaction and the long moments of staring overkill if he didn’t know that the sight of those plaits were a punch in the gut reminder of his wife. So he kept still and quiet and let Nina have her joy and Tucker have his memories. When she stopped spinning, he thought she would go to her father with her joy, asking him for a hug and a comment.

Instead, she went to him, threw her arms around him, and kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you,” she said, curling as close as she could.

*

Heaven knew Ed had grown to like Nina a _lot _in his three weeks of being at Tucker’s, but once school break started she was around just that _little _bit too much, derailing the uninterrupted morning times of research that he’d had when she’d still been at school. It helped a little that his afternoons became free, his job taking care of Elicia pausing for the two weeks of school holiday as well, but it was still a little vexing, especially since he was sure he’d lose his privileged access to Tucker’s library once uni started up again.

So he did what he always did when he was in a bind: he brought Al in to help. 

Ed had explained to Nina how Al could and couldn’t play with his cane, and had asked her to try and make Alexander behave extra well, but the giant ball of white fluff still bounded around the corner at full speed like he did every morning when Al and Ed started up the pathway. Ed immediately stepped right in front of Al and the projectile, readying himself to roll out of his brother’s path once Alexander hit. If need be, he’d hold the dog down until he calmed, or until Al got safely inside. Whichever came first. But Alexander slowed as he neared them, and simply trotted up to Al and gave him a gentle sniff and a lick, mild and polite as you please. As soon as Al had finished scratching his ears, the damn animal flung himself on Edward, knocking him flat again. 

“You’re a lot smarter than people think,” Ed growled at him, unimpressed, bruised afresh and grumpy. 

“Cats wouldn’t do this. I’m just saying,” Al said, laughter in his voice. 

Ed wanted to tell his brother to shut up, but only got the first syllable out before he was gagging and spitting because Alexander had licked him right on the mouth. 

* 

Al was an absolute hit with Nina, as Ed knew he’d be. Only truly evil people didn’t like his younger brother, and even  _then _ some of their cold, hard little hearts weren’t immune to his charms. And Nina was so much like him – together, the two brought sunshine and goodness and laughter to the house that no longer seemed as empty as it had to Ed when he’d first seen it. Al was a lot more imaginative than Ed, and he and Nina created fantasy worlds together that spread across the whole house and into the garden. Often, Ed was given small roles to play that usually involved him having to growl and threaten to steal something or somebody or do some other form of destruction or fairytale evil deed. 

But he was also enticed out of his work sometimes to really play along, mostly with both Al and Nina, but sometimes with Nina alone to give Al some more time to work himself, or for things a little too boisterously physical for the younger Elric. Those always ended, as most playtimes outside did, with Alexander knocking Ed fully off his feet, no matter how much Ed raged at the stupid mutt. It was a very, very good thing Rockbell Automail was made to last, but Ed was starting to grimly fear for his other limbs. 

Al also introduced Nina to boardgames, something Ed had very little tolerance for. One gloomy day they talked him into joining them – damn Al and his perceptive little glances that told Ed he  _knew _ concentrating when it was raining was an extra chore for his brother – and he was doing fine with reigning in his temper until he realised that Nina was winning because she’d been  _cheating. _

Ed called her out on it at once, ignoring Al’s little exasperated frown. “I’m not cheating!” Nina cried, crossing her arms. “I’m only helping myself win.”

Al just about fell off his chair laughing, and at the sight of Nina laughing at Al’s laughter, Ed was unable to contain himself, either. Towards the end of the holidays, Al stayed up very late one night making a beautiful treasure map for Nina, who had told them that day that she’d never had a real egg hunt since she was old enough to find the Easter eggs by herself. The brothers used their own money to buy the eggs, and Al hid them while Ed was on Alexander-wrangling duty. The last thing they needed was for Nina’s first real Easter to be ruined by a chocolate-poisoned dog. But everything went off without a hitch, and Nina was the type of person to share her chocolate, and they spent a lazy Sunday afternoon on the lawn. So lazy that Ed fell into a doze, letting Al and Nina’s low conversation wash around him.

“Ed used to hide eggs for me, too, when we were younger,” Ed heard Al say from the distance that sleep created.

“Did the Easter Bunny forget about you too?” Nina sounded sad.

“I guess so,” Al mused, carefully not commenting that they’d had the illusion of the Easter Bunny shattered for them at very young ages. “But he didn’t _mean _to. He just gets very busy sometimes. And he doesn’t get letters, like Santa does. So Ed remembered _for _him. To help a little.” 

Nina was quiet for a moment, probably busy stringing together the dandelion chain Al had taught her how to make. “Al? Ed is a very, very,  _very _ good big brother.” 

Ed was awake enough for his heart to catch in his chest. 

“He is,” Al agreed at once, every bit as serious. “The very best.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **USELESS FIC TRIVIA:**  

> 
> a) Doctors Jun Wu and Hiromitsu Nakauchi are real life people currently engaged in chimera research. 2% of the reason this fic was delayed was because I got sucked into reading up about what they're up to, and how fascinating chimeras and their projected real-life impact are. Both of them, as this fic says, are only interested in growing human organs inside animals for, amongst other reasons, helping aid the organ-donor shortage that the world is currently facing. 
> 
> b) Ed braiding people's hair is my second favourite personal FMA headcanon. I just absolutely adore the thought of him being soft and braiding the hair of those he cares about. Winry's hair. Riza's hair. Let Ed braid hair 2k19. 
> 
> c) I only got into FMA just over a month and a half ago. A friend of mine started me off with the first ten episodes of the OG, then the whole of Brotherhood, then bits of the manga they own, then the live action film. This all happened within the span of 34 days. I'd therefore watched Nina die four times in 32 days. I think it may have had a lasting effect on me, and this is my attempt at coping.


	2. Brother

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We’re taking a short break in our flimsy semblance of a plot to attempt to add to the number of fic where Ed and chronic pain are discussed. This has been one-third finished on my computer since a week after posting chapter one. Humorously enough, [this post](https://justanotherghostwriter.tumblr.com/post/190137592776) is what urged me to finish it, although this chapter’s existence wasn’t only motivated by my love of exploring h/c situations. I do, genuinely, think there is always merit in exploring aspects of people’s lives that either get ignored, glossed over, twisted into advertisement/propaganda of some sort or are viewed as something to fear or recoil from. I’ll never, ever do a perfect job, but I’d always like to try to use fiction for such purposes as well as entertainment.
> 
> A note that I am a huge fan of platonic cuddling, and that that preference is going to come up screaming in this chapter. It is definitely _not_ intended to be Elricest – let brothers have a good platonic cuddle pile 2k20. And apologies for the random switch in POVs. It wasn’t intended, but it wrote itself like this, and I went with it.
> 
> **Warnings** for this chapter: Discussions about residual limbs and Automail ports attached to them. Mentions of prescribed medication being taken (safely). Descriptions of chronic pain; mostly Ed’s version of it, but Al’s muscular disease is not entirely ignored. Some emeto, but nothing truly explicit in that department.

It became apparent, on the Wednesday before uni started up again, that Nina had not realised that Ed and Al would not be coming around any more once break ended. The two of them had been reading in Tucker’s library when she arrived back from her first day of the new term, and hadn’t understood why the boys were less interested in her than usual. Al had tried to explain, gently, that they both wanted to make the most out of the last few days they had in the library – inwardly lamenting that he hadn’t taken up Ed’s offer to peruse Tucker’s books for himself at an earlier stage. Tucker owned less material that fit his interests than fit Ed’s, but gems were still being discovered, and it was a little sad knowing he wouldn’t have time to excavate them once classes started again.

Nina reacted to the news with horror. And even though Al jumped in to help Ed explain once the sight of Nina’s coming tears sent his older brother into the usual near-panic, she refused to be consoled.

“Who am I gonna talk to about school?” she sniffed, fat tears rolling down her cheeks as she stared at Ed accusingly. “If I don’t tell people what happened at school then... then... then my brain will _rot_. It will _fall out my ears_. I’ll become as stupid as a boy!”

Al’s heart panged in sympathy for the small girl, worried, not for the first time, about how hard it was for her to make friends at her new school. He didn’t _want _her to be lonely, and didn’t want her to feel abandoned by them, but the simple fact was that the Tucker house was well out of their way, and neither brother had the time to fit in a daily visit in-between their usual schedules.

Ed, on the other hand, registered an entirely different thread from Nina’s complaint. His scowl turned darker, and he folded his arms. “What do you mean, ‘as stupid as a boy’? _I’m _a boy. Man. Whatever. And I’m _definitely _not stupid!”

“You don’t count as a boy. Not really,” Nina declared with another great sniff. “You’re not half as naff as real boys are.”

Al disguised his bark of laughter as a cough – poorly – as Ed spluttered in incoherent indignation, unable to find a response fitting to the half-compliment half-insult. Al took over trying to reassure the young girl while Ed continued to glower and mutter, but Nina was still alternating between begging and sulking by the time the two left that afternoon. And she didn’t let up for the next two days, drenching their final time at Tucker’s in misery.

“Ugh, _fine_, you little... stroppy monster. I’ll find a way to come back some days of the week, okay?” Ed finally exploded when Nina refused to let go of his Automail leg as they tried to leave for what was supposed to be the final time that Friday evening.

Nina’s relief and joy were so infectious – and so heart-wrenchingly genuine – that Al left the matter alone until he and Ed were on the bus back home.

“So. How in the blue hell are you going to figure this one, Brother?”

The term of address slipped out accidentally, but it had the benefit of stopping Ed’s blasé, brushed-off, lightly arrogant reply before it left his lips. It was one of the only clear memories Al had of his childhood – little Ed coming home from school and demanding that Mom explain why some family members were called by their role and others weren’t. Mom couldn’t give Ed a satisfactory enough answer, so Ed had turned to Al, plonked his hand on Al’s head and declared, firmly, that from now on he was going to call Al _brother_, because the rules of language were _stupid_. As was usual, Ed wandered away from his stubborn directive after a few months, when he was no longer personally enraged by the familial naming patterns of English society. As was usual, Al was more steadfast than his older brother, and the habit of calling Ed _brother _stuck much longer. And still slipped out, usually in private, usually when the circumstances were delicate.

“I’ll talk to Mustang about making research at Tucker’s count for something,” Ed said, after a few moments of actually thinking about it, tone still light and airy but with that gentle edge to it that working with Elicia had polished and grown. “And I’ll only go on the days when I can manage it. Don’t worry, Al; I’ll work it out.”

If, by that, Ed meant he’d make it physically possible to fulfil university requirements, keep his nanny job and go across town to Tucker’s for research and a play date with Nina occasionally, then Ed certainly did manage to _work it out_. What he hadn’t seemed to add into the equation, though, was the minimum requirements for a human being to function without heading worryingly fast toward a burnout. Ed’s job had already made him sleep less and work through lunches and sometimes dinners, and the addition of the Tuckers added later nights, weekend commitments and an unorthodox exercise regiment to the mix, as Ed was forced to sprint from buildings to buses, making connections by the skin of his teeth, more than once nearly being decked because he’d argued with a bus driver to just let him stand almost pressed against the door, damnit.

But, to Ed, the solution was solid and entirely worth the cost, and he _stubbornly _refused to budge a single inch every time Al tried to broach the subject, no matter from which direction. It usually ended with Ed playing what he felt was his trump card – “_You _wanna be the one to tell Winry you think her Automail can’t handle a bit of running? Be my guest. It was nice knowing you.” – and Al, exasperated, frustrated, worried, couldn’t get it into his brother’s thick _skull _that he wasn’t worried about the Automail failing, but the very human body it was attached to. 

Therefore, Al was only mildly surprised to walk into the lobby of their block of flats after an especially long Thursday to find his brother asleep on the public bench situated just outside the lifts. It had been rather gloomy and muggy all week, but the clouds had thickened that evening, blotting out the afternoon early and making the night much darker for the lack of stars, and the weak bulb in the lobby didn’t do much for Ed’s complexion. In fact, it made him look so sallow in his awkwardly-cricked position that Al’s first instinct was to press his fingers to Ed’s exposed neck to check for a pulse. Finding one, he pressed a hand to Ed’s forehead. There was no fever, but his brother was incredibly pale – had been since that morning, when he’d eaten breakfast in a hurried stupor. He’d apparently messed up a submission, had spent all night reworking most of it, and would have to squeeze the rest of the corrections and the act of re-submission into his day. Thursdays were usually _Al’s _longest and most demanding days, but it was obvious that Ed’s exhaustion far outstripped his for once.

“Ed,” Al said, gently, shaking his brother’s shoulder a little. Concern and exasperation warred in him, especially when it took a few moments to pull his brother awake. “Come on, mate, wake up. You’re sleeping in public. And in one of the most awkward positions I’ve ever seen.” Ed blinked at him, awake but barely, and Al found himself keeping his hand on his brother’s shoulder for some kind of anchor or support or _something_. “Are you with me?” Ed grunted and then yawned and stretched very gingerly. “What were you doing falling asleep down here?”

“Lift is broken,” Ed said around another jaw-cracking yawn.

“There are stairs up to our flat, you know.” Al raised one exasperated eyebrow.

Ed grunted again. “Knew you’d be coming soon.”

Even with his years of practice deciphering Ed’s body language and minimal responses, it took a beat or two longer to transcribe _that _from Ed-ese into English. But once Al did understand what his brother was actually saying – _the lift was broken, and I know Thursdays are long for you, so I waited to see if you’d need help up the stairs –_ the warmth and fondness pooled in his chest and even twisted the exasperation at Ed’s lack of self-care softer.

“I’m here,” Al said, tone much gentler than before. “Let’s go up and get something to eat.”

Ed knew that Al didn’t particularly love stairs, and that his opinion of them diminished even more after long, tiring days. As such, Ed almost always matched his climbing pace to Al’s, rarely moving more than a step or two behind or before Al, where he acted as a buffer. That day, he kept pace with Al stair for stair, and Al assumed it was because Ed was doubting his firm assurance that he didn’t need more help up than his cane and the stair rail. But when they paused outside their door and Ed fumbled a little too badly with the keys, Al’s suspicions spiked. Ed was still short of breath, even though Al had already gotten his back. And there was _something _about his brother’s posture that Al squinted at, trying to unpick, suddenly sorry he’d given in to Ed’s insistence that he carry both his and Al’s backpacks up the stairs.

Ed moved through the door first, which, in Ed-ese, was a near surefire sign that he was trying to escape Al’s scrutiny and hide something from his younger brother. Al frowned at his back, but let Ed escape down the hall to drop off the bags, knowing that cornering his older brother without evidence and a plan would only backfire and allow Ed to get away with whatever he was hiding. So Al went to the kitchen, instead, and busied himself with warming up some leftovers.

“Ed, dinner!”

The fact that his brother hadn’t come skulking around for food before then was something _else _telling for Al to try and read, but Ed was making it hard by keeping quiet – both verbally and in body language – when he finally appeared in the kitchen. And then one of the most hated expressions his brother could wear, in Al’s opinion, slipped through the carefully blank facade.

“Al,” Ed mumbled, voice as guilty as his expression. “Thursdays are my day – ”

“It’s just warming leftovers.”

“Yeah, b – ”

“It’s done. Sit.”

Ed’s eyes narrowed, and he moved to cross his arms. The action aborted abruptly, strangely, even when Ed’s expression didn’t change. “You first.”

Al rolled his eyes but conceded that battle, knowing by then how to pick the ones he fought. And he couldn’t deny it _was _a relief to get off his feet, stretch out his cane arm a bit and get warm, incredibly good – Gracia had sent them the meal home with Ed the day before – food placed before him. But the feeling of relief was short-lived; as much as he tucked into his food and enjoyed it, Ed only picked, moving things around his plate so expertly that if Al hadn’t made sure to commit how much he’d put on Ed’s plate to memory, it may have actually looked like Ed had eaten.

Al slowed down his pace, guessing Ed wouldn’t leave until he did in an effort to be the one to take the plates to the sink so he could deposit the evidence without Al seeing. It seemed that his suspicions were correct, because his brother’s food-moving slowed. And then his left elbow came up on the table, fork trailing from his fingers, giving up the pretence of doing anything to the near untouched food. And then his head rested on his hand, fork dangerously close to poking him in the eye. And then he was still, eyes closed as he dozed. There was something bothering Al about the picture before him, other than the fact that his brother wasn’t eating and was asleep sitting up again, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it – some subtext in Ed’s quiet way of communicating that even Al was missing. So he combed through everything he could remember seeing since finding Ed asleep on the bench, trying to find pieces he’d missed along the way and to assign meaning to the ones he’d noticed but still could not quite decipher, staring with a hard frown at the sight of his brother before him as he did so.

Ed was eating with his left hand, Al realised in a rush. And, with that realisation, everything else clicked into place, not a moment or two before Ed jerked, suddenly, and came awake with a deep wince he couldn’t hide fast enough.

“It’s going to rain,” Al surmised, grimly sympathetic.

Ed shot him a tired, guarded look – a gauge of whether he could get away with the lie or not. Al made his expression harder, and Ed sighed. “Yeah. Most probably.” He waved dismissively as Al opened his mouth. “It’s fine.”

Al held his tongue with some effort, but it hurt to watch his brother help him clear the dinner dishes because he could read the clear truth in every wavering step and in how Ed barely moved his Automail arm at all. Ed didn’t put up much more than a token protest when Al shepherded him to bed after the dishes were done, already mostly asleep on his feet, and after Al washed away most of the stress of a hard day with a piping hot shower, he dried off the shower seat, hung the towels on the drying rack, rummaged in the medicine cabinet and then crept back into Ed’s room, dodging the clothes and shoes Ed had left strewn haphazardly around, sure that by then his older brother would be as properly asleep as he needed him to be. 

“Ed. Hey.” After a lot of coaxing, his brother’s eyes opened, but there was hardly any recognition there. “Drink these, please.”

It was a bit of a low blow; sneaking in to give Ed pills he’d have fought against taking if he’d been awake and coherent. But Al satisfied the guilt by producing every wince that crossed Ed’s face as he sat up, drank and then curled back under the covers as evidence for the necessity of his actions, and he promised himself he’d wake Ed up earlier than he usually did so that his brother could take a long, hot bath before he had to start the day. Hopefully, that and the pills the night before the rain started would help if it turned out to be a _really _bad day. But maybe it wouldn’t be; maybe it would be one of those days where the rain would cause a slight nuisance of an ache, but nothing more. Or maybe the forecast would prove right and Ed would be proven wrong, and it wouldn’t rain at all. One could hope.

* * *

Tucker’s notes were blurring before Ed’s eyes, but he couldn’t stop himself from squinting at the undecipherable squiggles, the maddening conviction that he’d _missed something _spurring him on. His shoulder and leg throbbed dully with the pain that came from standing there flipping the pages of the table-sized tome, but Ed grit his teeth and continued paging, eyes searching the black squiggles for some sort of recognition. Tucker’s presentation was due any minute, and Ed could hear the animals that had come to act as the panel of judges start to make their way across the house, paws and hooves pattering against the floor. Still, he could not grasp the missing piece his mind was telling him was hidden just out of sight – the one that would shed light on all of the mysteries and nigglings that had gone on for more than a month. Ed paged faster, and his shoulder ached even fiercer with the motion. Ed grit his teeth harder, hoping that he could just hold out until he found –

The pain turned from a dull throb into a sharp, sustained stab that raced down his right shoulder and into the back of his neck, at almost the exact same time that his thigh clenched tight and refused to unclench. Ed came awake grasping at his sheets, teeth grit hard enough that his jaw throbbed, too, breath coming in pants through his nose and confused thoughts still trying to scramble for the mystery in Tucker’s notes. He was still muddled enough that he tried to curl around the unyielding spasm in his leg, and the motion of moving set off enough pain that nausea bloomed, sharp and hot, in his stomach.

Forcing his jaw open so he could take deep breaths, Ed localised and analysed every individual stimulus around him, slowly piecing together what it all meant. Thigh cramping. Shoulder throbbing, and then stabbing at random intervals. Back of his neck stiff and uncomfortable. Hands gripping the sheets – not helping with the shoulder problem. Release hold. Unclench jaw even more to relieve _that _pain and aid breathing. Move head very carefully away from where the sweat had made the pillow damp to remove the icky feeling of wetness against the side of his head. Then assess the background – dark, so still early. Cold – colder than it had been since sometime in February. And the rain was loud and vicious enough to clearly be heard beating steadily against the window like the clattering of many feet.

Nothing new; nothing to be concerned about. But still irritating, especially because he hadn’t had a pain day as bad as this one was promising to be for a while, and the sudden jump from mild annoyance into debilitation came at exactly the wrong time. He didn’t know what the time was – moving to find his phone to check would cost him too much to be worth it – and he vaguely hoped his planning would lull him into a semblance of sleep until Al came in to wake him up. Then he would peel himself out of bed and take a hot bath for as long as he could without making himself late. Breakfast on the go so he could down a handful of pills, straight to campus for the seminar... Or if he cancelled that then he could sleep longer... But he _couldn’t _get out of that one, because Bradley was an asshole when it came to attendance... So maybe he’d go to the seminar and then crash at Ling’s for a nap and blow off Mustang...

Ed continued to try and distance himself from the input his body was sending him by focusing with deliberate meticulousness on mental grousing and formulating a plan for the day going forward, trying to calculate the best actions to take to ensure the least amount of important things had to be postponed. But as much as his exhausted mind yearned to be taken back to sleep by the planning process, it couldn’t block out the pain enough. An untold amount of time passed, and the cold Ed couldn’t be rid of continued to seep straight into his aching bones. It was dramatic as shit, he knew, but he swore right then he could feel the location of every screw in his clavicle and through the muscles in his chest and back; they felt like they were being drilled in afresh, and his thoughts kept going back to them, head pounding in time with the waves of pain.

And his thigh... It was a constant burn, muscle locked tight and refusing to let up, the cold of the port squeezing tighter and tighter around it, causing intermittent spasms that made Ed even forget about his shoulder until they passed. Without warning, the next thigh spasm travelled higher than his aching hip, making his lower back tingle in warning. Ed swore out loud into his pillow, instinctively gripping the sheets with his flesh hand, knowing suddenly that the day was worse than he’d even imagined. Sure enough, another thigh spasm hit and it ignited the nerve from his Automail port right into his spine, ripping wildfire into the nerves clustered at the base of his spinal column. Ed gasped at the new level of agony and tried to breathe through it; tried to tell his brain to shut off those pain receptors because it was just the nerve connection reacting to the constant clench in his thigh; there was no real injury to his back so it didn’t need to register injury in one of the highest concentrations of nerves in his whole body, please, the thigh itself was bad enough he couldn’t stand it if –

The gasping turned to something that was more choking on the air as his thigh-hip-back flared in agony again, and in the moment of his spine feeling like it was being electrocuted the only thought he had was _no more_. Sanity returned as most of the pain fled, and with it came the realisation that there was bile flooding his mouth, and no amount of swallowing would halt his inevitable – and, in his eyes, unfortunate – reaction to pain on that level. All of his options involved movement, so Ed figured he’d jump in as far as he could go: would peel himself out of bed, get to the bathroom and, once the nausea wore itself out, he would have his bath, no matter what the time currently was. He’d apologise for waking Al later – right then he just had to _move _because he wouldn’t be able to hold it for much longer.

It took more effort than he’d expected just to sit up. The room was freezing, and it immediately dipped and swayed in front of his eyes. His shoulder screamed at the movement, and he had to clamp his teeth together to stop... crying out or throwing up; he wasn’t sure which would come first. Panting through his nose, Ed clawed his way onto his right leg with his left arm, taking time he didn’t have because everything was so freaking _heavy_ he could barely understand it. He made it upright, but swayed with the combination of the vertigo, the nausea and the agony. And even just trying to stop himself from tipping over put too much weight on his Automail leg; it crumbled instantly beneath him, sending him sprawling ungracefully.

The impact of hitting the ground did him in. For a while there was nothing except the dull haze of pain and the involuntary heaving, until Ed realised that the circle was unending because he was putting weight on both of his Automail limbs from his mostly prone position on the floor. Moving was a chore that sparked new waves of pain and nausea, but he could feel the relief once he was leaning only on his quivering flesh limbs, mere inches from the floor but stubbornly refusing to give in and just collapse facedown on the parts of yesterday’s discarded clothes he hadn’t messed up.

“Ed?” There was a knocking on his bedroom door, and then the sound of it opening. “I know it’s earlier than usual, but I thought you could take – ”

Ed didn’t even have the energy to look up at his brother; to take in Al’s expression as he cut himself off mid-sentence. There was a beat where nothing happened, and then Al hurriedly left the room. The first time he came back, he made his way to Ed’s side and placed a hand on Ed’s left shoulder and the middle of his back. Ed made a noise of protest, and both hands removed themselves at once.

“Back,” Ed forced out, the syllables almost unrecognisable.

He still couldn’t raise his head to look at Al; he felt like a limp noodle. An aching limp noodle. His thoughts scattered again, and he returned to the present with a jolt when Al’s hand to his shoulder returned. Without a word, Al coaxed him very slightly more upright so that he could put a palm of pills to Ed’s mouth. Ed took a moment to ensure he wouldn’t try and retch over his little brother before prying open his jaws, and Al tossed the pills down his throat for him. Later, Ed knew he’d feel guilty all over again about how expertly Al administered medication to him when he was mostly out of it. Right then, he couldn’t muster any emotion at all. Al’s hand on his shoulder pushed gently but insistently, and Ed followed the movements until they hurt, at which time he jerked to a stop with a strange noise he was disgusted had come from him.

“I know,” Al murmured at him, blessedly slow and deliberately clear and soft. “But it will help in the long run, Brother.”

So he followed Al’s nudging, letting his younger brother arrange his limbs for him. When he was next aware, he found himself sitting propped up against the side of his bed, a pillow under his Automail leg and a blanket wrapped around himself. He couldn’t remember being moved that much; couldn’t even remember how much it hurt. But he felt the pain of the current moment; his back and shoulder were screaming, again, in off-harmony increments, and Ed let his eyes squeeze shut, counting down the seconds until the pills kicked in. He never made it past eight before his exhausted, muddled brain lost track and he’d have to start all over again when he came back to himself.

Incomplete clarity crawled its way back to him as the pain slowly ebbed into something that was actually manageable. Ed was able to take in his surroundings and to realise that Al had cleaned up after him – another thing to be furious and guilty about, later; he made note of it – and was contemplating crawling his way back into bed when Al returned with an armful of hot water bottles. Granny Pinako gave each of them a new one for every Christmas, outdoing the ridiculousness of the outer covering every year. Al dumped them on the bed and then knelt beside Ed in that careful, slightly awkward way of his, holding out a plastic water bottle in silence, still not demanding that Ed process much speech.

“Not yet,” Ed made himself say, to prove that he was... not alright, but better. No longer in a state that needed Al’s face to be as pinched with sadness and worry as it was.

And some of the tension _did _ease from Al’s face at his rasped but coherent words. “And moving into bed?”

Ed hummed in agreement, even though the thought of moving at all made him want to snarl instead. Al capped the bottle and set it aside and then settled his weight differently as he reached for his older brother. Ed, present enough to be more worried about Al than himself, tried to slip out of his brother’s hold as quickly as possible, hoping to support himself so Al didn’t have to take strain getting them both to their feet. His flesh leg, taking all his weight very suddenly, wobbled, and Al let out a noise and pulled him closer. Too fast; Ed crashed all his weight into his brother, and Al had to scramble with his cane to keep them both upright.

“No, wai- Ed, it’s okay.” Al held him close as Ed tried to struggle away. “I’ve got this. Easy. Don’t be an idiot.”

Ed snorted at him, but didn’t manage any more. He let Al guide and support him most of the way to the bed, but when he felt his little brother begin to tremble under the strain he broke away with a vicious tug and ended up tumbling the rest of the way onto the mattress, jarring himself painfully. Al sighed at him in pure exasperation, and he was muttering unflattering things under his breath as Ed rode out the pain of the second impact of the day. Still, Al’s hands were gentle as he stacked the hot water bottles around Ed’s shoulder – two with covers shaped like a duck and a unicorn respectively, Ed could see from the corner of his eye – and his thigh and lower back. The heat felt as amazing as a cool drink on a hot day; as amazing as balm to a burn or the sudden ease of pressure off a new, deep injury.

The slowly encompassing bliss was enough to send him into a state of near-dozing, and he missed what his brother was doing or saying until he felt the bed dip and move. Ed cracked an eye open to find Al settling himself, carefully on the bed beside him, textbook in his hand.

“No,” Ed croaked, trying to sound fierce and firm. Al simply raised an eyebrow at him, unperturbed. “You’ve _class_, Al.”

“Like you never skived a lecture,” Al scoffed. “Besides, I’ve asked Mei to take notes for me and to talk me through it all later; I won’t miss anything.” Ed growled a little, trying to work up the energy and the language needed to yell at Al enough that his brother would go to class. Al turned a frown in his direction, eyes flashing in stubbornness. “Ed, I’m not going. And I’m lying here. So you can take advantage of that or not – your choice. But I’m not moving either way.”

Ed scowled, clenched his still-aching jaw and put his head back down with as much force as he could to properly convey his anger. He heard Al open his book and still lay stubbornly on his own side of the bed, roiling in emotion but still too out of it to process exactly what he was feeling. “I called Gracia, by the way,” Al said quietly around the sound of him rustling pages. “She says she will send Elicia to Selim’s house for the afternoon and not to worry and to feel better soon. Also got Ms Hawkeye, who said she’d tell Mustang you wouldn’t make it in and also expressed her wishes. Didn’t get hold of Tucker, but I’m sure you can make it up to Nina when you next see her.”

Something in Ed wanted to ask Al to try Tucker again; some stirring unease probably left over from the dream and the worry about the man’s presentation that was happening the next day. Tucker had been more and more visibly worried about it the closer the date came, and Ed had heard him mutter more than once that he just didn’t know what he’d do if he failed as badly as last year and they pulled his tenure and funding alike. But articulating his worry into something Al would understand and not brush off as the muddled emotional soup of the pain and meds was beyond Ed, right then, so he held his tongue and focused on being silently mad at his younger brother, hoping Al would cave first.

But Al remained at his side, quietly reading and very clearly intending to stick to his promise to stay whether Ed liked it or acknowledged it or not. And, after what felt like an age, Ed swallowed his pride and admitted defeat, because the pain was still present enough that it kept snatching him back from sleep, and he was desperate enough to admit he needed what Al was offering. Slowly, so he didn’t trigger more nausea or pain spasms, Ed moved himself closer to Al. As soon as Al noticed him coming, he scooted closer and raised his right arm so Ed could curl under it, placing his cheek against Al’s chest as a pillow. He carefully draped his Automail arm over his brother’s chest, and manoeuvred more onto his side so he could slip his Automail leg over Al’s legs as well. The combination of the body heat, the elevation and the simple comfort of curling around Al would, Ed knew, do further wonders for the lingering discomfort, finally letting him get some rest.

“Y’ should’ve gonta class,” he muttered into Al’s shirt, needing to have the last word in, already feeling himself sinking into sleep as the last of the persistent burning steadily faded.

“Uh-huh,” was all Al replied, gently reaching around Ed’s form latched across him so he could find the hot water bottles and stack them against the strategic points on Ed’s form.

Ed wanted to reach around and help him, but the lure of sleep was impossible to ignore now that the relief was crashing over him in waves, and his thoughts lost coherency around the time he wanted to tell Al the unicorn’s horn was digging into his cheek a little.

***

Ed’s first impression upon waking was that Winry had arrived sometime while he’d slept; there was a hand massaging around his shoulder port methodologically, and the very muted murmur of her and Al conversing. He dozed for a few moments longer, thoughts muddled between dreams and the hazy conviction that he’d have to chop more wood for Granny very soon if it was to keep being cold like it currently was, but the slowly increasing persistence of his arm and leg dragged him back to reality eventually. It wasn’t Winry massaging him; she used both hands, and did more than just concentric circles. The touch still eased a lot of his tense, unhappy muscles, though, so he didn’t really mind, at that moment of vague coherency, _who _was touching him, really.

The mostly muted ache in his thigh suddenly flared brighter and higher, and his leg twitched involuntarily at the spasm. The hand between his shoulders instantly moved down toward his lower back, but the kick of pain had finally woken Ed enough for him to remember that he _should _be very concerned about who was touching him.

“No,” he tried to say, peeling his eyes open against his body’s wishes.

It came out more of a grunt of protest, but it still had its intended effect; Al jolted a little in surprise and stopped with the awkward-angled massage, looking down at his brother in one motion and ripping one of the earphones out of his ears with the other. The low murmur of voices became a little louder, and Ed saw Al had been watching a man at the front of a room giving a lecture of some kind.

“Sorry,” Al apologised to him, trying to angle so he could see Ed’s face while Ed was still mostly draped over him. “What’s wr-? Oh. No, sorry, Mei,” he said, voice suddenly turning sheepish. There was the hushed murmur of the female voice Ed had heard before, coming from the dangling earbud. “I’m talking to Ed. I’m muting you for a moment; be right back.” He did just that on his phone, and Ed realised that he’d slept much longer than he’d intended to; long enough that Al had missed at least one other lecture that, apparently, Mei was live-streaming for him. Ed’s stomach churned a little in guilt. And then continued churning. “You technically still have fifteen minutes before the next dose,” Al fretted, putting the hand that had been massaging Ed on his brother’s forehead. Al’s frown deepened. “You gonna be okay ‘til then? Or...?”

“Hmm. How long’s your lecture, still?”

Al hesitated. Ed squinted at him until he relented: “Twenty-five minutes. But I can – ”

“Hmm-mmm. Be fine til then.” Ed closed his eyes again.

“Ed – ”

“’S warm, Al.” And, mostly because he wanted his brother not to squander the education he was helping pay for, but also a lot because it was true, Ed added, “D’n wanna move, yet. Please.”

Al hesitated only for another short moment before he hummed in assent and returned to his lecture. Ed watched the screen, even though he couldn’t see much from his angle or hear anything but indistinct murmuring and Al’s occasional soft reply to something Mei was saying to him, not-quite dozing. He kept his growing discomfort quiet, but couldn’t stop his body’s reactions altogether, and when he twitched for the third time in less than two minutes Al, almost absently, began rubbing between his shoulder-blades again.

“Hmm-mmm,” Ed grumbled, but this time, Al didn’t hear. “Al.”

Al glanced at him, Ed wriggled a little pointedly, and his brother stopped the massage, a frown coming to his face. He tapped at his phone, presumably muting himself again, but didn’t remove his earphones this time around as he scrutinised his brother.

“If it’s bad enough already that even a massage hurts, Brother, then I’m – ”

“S’not hurting _me_,” Ed grumbled.

Al blinked for one moment and then sighed so hard Ed felt himself rise and fall with the force of it. “Ed, honestly. I know my own limits, okay?”

Ed frowned harder at him. “You – ”

Al shook his head, firmly talking over Ed. “Trust me. And let me choose. Please.” Ed scowled. “Please?”

“Y’kay, fine.”

Al grinned in muted triumph and returned to both his lecture and his massaging. And, damnit, it _did _help, especially as the pain crawled its way back from being muted to insistent and loud, but Ed still had to deal with the other guilty things from before; he didn’t want to add Al being in pain because of him to the list. He _hated _when that happened; would gladly be in daily pain if it meant Al would be free of it forever. And he really meant that sentiment, even when he was shaking and nauseous again, feeling even worse because Al’s heat and cushioning had left the bed. He was, thankfully, able to take the pills himself this time, and even protested a little when Al insisted on putting a cool cloth on his forehead. He _knew _he frequently ran a fever on days even half as bad as the one he was currently having, but all his body registered was the cold and the desire to get away from it. Al stayed close but didn’t return to lying on the bed, alternating between checking Ed’s temperature and getting himself ready for a tutorial group he had to actually attend in person.

“Are you...” Al hesitated over the question as he tucked the hot water bottles around Ed again, having finally agreed that they could be refilled and go back on the bed.

“’m fine,” Ed told him, curling greedily around the heat, trying not to wince at the still-constant throbbing from his limbs. “Go away.”

Al snorted at him, a little amused despite himself, but still hovered and fussed for a few more minutes before reluctantly leaving. Even with the points of heat and with the pills fully kicking in, though, Ed couldn’t drop off to sleep again, restless and muddled and uncomfortable and increasingly grumpy. There was a sense of _unwell _hovering around his chest, heavy and lurching, making him regret letting Al bully him into drinking all that water. His phone ringing startled him, and for a few long moments he debated just letting it ring. But curiosity got the better of him, and he laboriously reached for it on the end table, bringing it sloppily to his ear without checking the number.

“’lo?”

“Oh, so you _do _know how to work a phone. And here I was thinking your lack of knowledge was why you never call,” Winry huffed at him.

Instinctively, Ed rolled his eyes. “I called you last week,” he protested, working extra hard to speak clearly and with energy he didn’t actually feel he had.

“Ed, that was nearly a month ago,” Winry sighed at him.

“No, it wasn’t,” he argued, reflexively, trying to recall exactly when he’d last called Winry past the haziness and sluggish speed his brain was working at.

“It really was,” she said, patiently. “So, you wanna hear what I’ve been doing this week?”

Ed squinted in confusion, thrown by her words. If she’d had big news, she would have texted him; he was much better at texting than calling, and she knew it. And then the realisation trickled through. “Al called you.”

“Well, yes; he’s better at remembering to do that.” Her voice was _too _casual and airy. There was no suspicious demands to know what Al would have to call her about. And she hadn’t yet picked up that he wasn’t one hundred percent, something she could usually sniff from the first few words they shared. Which meant that his impossibly mother hennish younger brother had called to tell Winry he was having a bad day so that she’d call and check in on Ed while Al could not. “So. Want to hear about my week, or not?”

“Win...”

“So this guy came in on Monday,” she said, forcefully, stubbornly, “and he was complaining about really weird symptoms to his Automail. He’s been an amputee for years, but he only got Automail for the first time about three years ago. He’s a pretty tall man, with sandy coloured hair that’s pretty long at the back. Like he can’t be bothered to cut it, you know?”

Her voice slipped into the quality he remembered from sick days, sad days, the first harrowing nightmare days after his Automail surgery – calm, soothing, even-cadenced. Back then, she’d read whatever she could get her hands on to him to distract him from the pain – physical or otherwise – long enough that his mind would be lulled into sleep. And she’d found that the more descriptive she was, the more he latched on to what she was saying and the easier he shut out the rest of the world. She moved on to listing all the ingredients in the medication she’d given to the sandy-haired man, moving through all of them in a soothing rhythm, and love for her bloomed warm and almost aching in his chest.

“Winry,” he tried, needing to thank her in that moment.

“Shh! You’re not listening if you’re talking. So he went away after that, and I watched him walk slowly up the road. He just kept going on and on and on, and didn’t pause for anything, didn’t startle when the bus went past, just kept walking on and on and on...”

She hadn’t even gotten to the end of Monday before he fell asleep, the phone tucked under his ear.

* * *

Winry’s text had come through in the middle of the tutorial, and Al had checked it under the desk surreptitiously. _He fell asleep. Texted him to say he should call back if he needed to, though. _He quickly sent Winry his thanks, with lots of emojis, and hoped, guiltily, that he hadn’t made her worry too much. Ed was of the firm belief that the less she – or anybody else, for that matter – knew, the better it was for their peace of mind. Al, while understanding his brother’s point, especially with his own personal experience of people being _too _involved and overbearing when they wanted to help with things they couldn’t or shouldn’t help with, was more of the opinion that if you let people in to the full process they could rest assured that worse wasn’t happening. Maybe it was because people were right when he said he was the more naturally empathetic of the two brothers. Or maybe he just remembered _far _too well what it was like, sitting downstairs in the Rockbells’ kitchen, tensed to hear any sound at all from the surgery room while the two engineers performed the surgery Ed was, according to every medical professional, still too young to have. Nobody came to tell him any news, and he was left to his imagination and his horror. The longer the hours stretched, the more he’d almost been desperate to hear Ed make some noise of pain, just so that the silence could be shattered with proof that his brother was still _alive_.

Still, he didn’t usually tell Winry when Ed was having a typical off day. But today was _not _typical. Even thinking about it briefly made his skin crawl with the desire to go back home and check that Ed really was still sleeping, and not curled up and miserable, unable to do anything to alleviate the pain. Al started tapping his pen against the page, stopping only when Mei gave him a half-concerned and half-irritated frown.

“Are you sure _you’re _okay?” she asked him as they were finally released, shrugging on her panda-clad raincoat as he gathered himself and his cane. He glanced at her in curious askance, and she blushed a little. “I mean... I just... ah...” She floundered a little, and Al couldn’t help but find it endearing. “You shouldn’t... ignore yourself just because Ed is also hurting,” she blurted at last.

Al gave her the biggest, kindest smile he could manage. “I’m fine,” he reassured her, firmly. “Maybe a bit more tired than usual. Maybe will be a bit stiffer tonight than usual – actually, probably will be. But it’s completely under threshold.”

“Right,” she agreed, though there was still some doubt on her face. “Just... let me know if I can do anything else.”

Al gave her a quick side-hug, thanked her again for everything she’d done and then made his way as fast as he could back home, happy that the rain had paused for the moment so he didn’t get drenched between the building and the bus. He was slightly less lucky on his way from the bus to their block of flats, and ended up having to sheepishly apologise when he nearly toppled an old lady in the lobby when he went too fast and his cane slipped on the wet tiles. The lift seemed to take forever, but he was finally unlocking their front door, dumping his bag on the tiny table wedged into the corner of the kitchen and then finally making his way to Ed’s room.

Half of him dreaded walking in to a sight similar to the one that had punched him, low and hard, the first thing that morning. But the room, still smelling faintly sour, was completely devoid of the older Elric when he pushed open the door. Concern rocketing, Al quickly made his way to the bathroom door.

“Ed?” He knocked. “Are you alive?”

“Yeah,” Ed called back. “Bathing.”

The relief that Ed was feeling well enough to get up and run a bath for himself made his shoulders sag. “Dinner?” he asked, hopefully. There was a long and telling pause, and Al winced in sympathy. “I’ll make a little bit extra, just in case,” he said neutrally. “Leave the water in, please.”

He left his dinner half-finished when he heard Ed leave the bathroom, and was quick enough that he could catch his brother’s last few steps back to his bedroom. Ed was limping rather heavily, but able to hold his own weight and walk in a steady line. More relief crashed over Al, and he took a small bowl of soup and dry toast to Ed in his room before going for his own bath, letting out half the tepid water before topping it up again with hot. He took his time – he really was tired and a little achy; just hadn’t really let himself notice until then – and when he was done he found that Ed had washed his dishes and reheated Al’s soup, pointedly leaving it on his bedside table.

Al grinned to himself and happily flopped onto Ed’s bed, waiting until his brother was comfortably curled around him before reaching for the warm soup. Ed had queued episodes of _Black Books_, and Al contentedly let himself zone out, warm and content and comfortable. Without warning, Ed suddenly burrowed around a bit and produced one of the newly-filled hot water bottles, placing it across Al’s right shoulder.

“Ed,” Al protested, but Ed stubbornly snuggled down again, angling his Automail arm _just so _that Al would have to struggle to move enough in order to remove the hot water bottle. “I’m _fine_, Brother.”

Ed simply grunted in return, and Al sighed in fond exasperation. Ed was asleep by the time the last queued episode ended, and Al’s eyes were incredibly heavy. He could, he reasoned, just sleep there for the night. It would do Ed a world of good, and he shouldn’t be _too _sore in the morning. Ed’s bed was soft enough, even if it wasn’t the speciality orthopaedic mattress Ed had viciously saved up for for Al. It was warm there, in the bed – in ways beyond physical warmth. Worth the cost, he decided, and gingerly began reaching for the light switch as he let out a jaw-cracking yawn.

Ed grunted, shifted, and then began carefully pulling away. “Wait, I’m not leaving,” Al protested, but Ed didn’t listen; simply rolled over onto his back, mumbled something unintelligible with his eyes closed and seemed to go back to sleep.

Al deliberated staying, anyway, but he knew how furiously guilty Ed would feel in the morning should he find Al asleep next to him, whether or not Al really was reaping any severe consequences for his actions. And Ed... Ed was guilty about too much already. So Al tucked his brother in, put extra pillows under his Automail limbs as gently as he could, then switched off the light and stole out the room.

When he got up, three hours later, not entirely awake but needing to check before he could fall back asleep again, Ed was sound asleep, the blanket only askew, his stomach bare to the cold air. With a snort of amusement, Al tucked him in again, and then fell into a deep, contented sleep the moment his head hit his own pillow.


	3. Instinct

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to thephilosophersapprentice, whose chapter sixteen of _Forgotten Souls_ made me viscerally relive Nina’s arc again and made me even more determined to finish this fix-it AU. 
> 
> At long freaking last, the weird chapter headings can be explained: this whole fic was written to fill the ‘Big Brother Instinct’ square on my Bad Things Happen bingo card. 
> 
> **Warnings:** This is the chapter where it all goes to hell, folks. Child experimentation, animal experimentation, mentions of drugging for said experimentation to take place, terrible parenting, a gun being waved around and shot, discussions of the darker side of the child welfare system, punching in the face – this one’s got it all.

Tucker was in Ed’s dreams, again, and although he woke up not remembering what, exactly, the professor had been doing in said dreams, the feeling of _something missing _persisted. He was still slightly sore and stiff that morning, but worlds better from the day before, and lay in bed mulling over whether he should go to the Tuckers’ place early, or wait until the actual presentation started later in the afternoon. It would be very presumptuous to show up without invitation when the man was no doubt preparing and, Ed knew, incredibly nervous he’d fail for a second year in a row, but perhaps he could be of use distracting Nina, giving Tucker more space and chance to collect himself. She’d probably be feeling unsettled herself, he realised, thinking through all he’d learned about children’s emotional sensitivity from his time with Elicia and Nina over the past year. Nina’s would encounter her last support system as frazzled and afraid, and Tucker was not the best at communicating at the best of times; might not know how to reassure Nina when she needed reassurance and not rejection.

As he slowly got up and started getting dressed, Ed felt a surge of irritation and dislike towards Nina’s mother. Tucker was, presumably, not the easiest man to live with, but for her to leave her own daughter behind... At least Hohenheim had left for important science, for all the exoneration _that_ gave him. Nina’s mother, as far as he knew, wasn’t a scientist; had left out of fear of Tucker _maybe _failing again and them having to go to a lifestyle to which she was not accustomed. And the irony was she’d left just _days_ before Tucker had his first breakthrough. In fact, Ed suddenly remembered, there had been some reference to Nina’s mother as part of a scientific experiment... hadn’t there? So maybe she had been... Oh. It had been a note in one of Tucker’s journals that suggested she’d left –

But. Wait. No, she must have left _after _Tucker’s first review, because Ed could distinctly remember Tucker’s notes referring to samples he’d taken from his wife a day or two after the breakthrough. He hadn’t _said _it was his wife, of course, but her blood type was unique. Matched only, Ed had found out later, by Nina’s. So she’d have to have been –

But... hold on... _why _was Tucker taking samples of...? And making notes of it in his private journals in code – easily cracked code, by Ed’s standards, but, still... It was almost if...

A ludicrous, horrific suggestion dropped like a stone in Ed’s head, and as it did it unlocked all the nigglings and almost all the mysteries he’d picked up while reading Tucker’s research material.

“That’s absolutely _daft_,” he said aloud to himself, incredulous. “That’s science fiction shit.”

And yet... And yet he could suddenly remember Tucker’s face when he’d asked him about human trials, the very first time they’d met. And... surely Ed was twisting the memory; Tucker hadn’t _really _looked that intensely sinister, had he? The man was a distinguished professor. Not a Gothic novel mad scientist and murderer. Ed _knew _this. But the unease at how perfectly the fantasy explanation fit would not leave him alone.

Eventually, he went hunting for his phone, finally finding it between the bed and the wall where it must have fallen after he’d fallen asleep on the phone with Winry. The battery was dangerously low, but he had enough juice to try and give Tucker a call. No answer. He called the home phone, which Nina had great joy answering. No answer. He tried Nina’s battered old calls-only brick of a phone. No answer. It was early and on a Saturday, true, but Nina woke up, as most kids did, at sparrow’s fart and he doubted Tucker would be able to sleep late, either. His paranoia increased, making him jittery and tense. Usually, he could logic his emotions into some sort of submission, but logic was not winning out at the moment.

Eventually, he decided he was going to go over to the Tuckers’, reassure himself he was a Grade A Idjit, play with Nina, support Tucker during the presentation and then come home to tell Al everything so he could be laughed at. He sent Al a quick text explaining where he was going and then pocketed his phone and the charger, intending to charge the thing when he was at the house. He didn’t make the first bus he tried to catch – too slow on his still uncomfortable Automail – and decided to walk to the next stop despite his growing discomfort and its accompanying limp to give himself something to _do _instead of just wait in keyed-up absurdity. He couldn’t stop finding new bits of ‘evidence’ to support his entirely wild, fantasy-horror theory, and, for one of the first times in his life, logic was _not _overcoming superstition.

Alexander did not come bounding from out of nowhere to knock him down. Ed’s worry increased a little, and then plunged into icy dread when he found the front door open. He knocked anyway, flinching a little at the way it echoed.

“Hello? Nina? Professor Tucker? It’s Ed.”

He strained to hear an answer and heard none; heard no sound of muffled cartoons or Nina talking to herself or even muffled footsteps. And then somebody hooted, loud and long, a little ways off, and the sound made him jump and swear out loud. Even that was met with no reaction, and the hairs on the back of Ed’s neck began to rise. He headed toward the rooms used as Tucker’s lab, exasperatedly trying to dispel the wild imagination he’d suddenly grown with the logical explanation: Nina was bothering her dad in the lab. Alexander had, as always, followed her down there. They were too far away, too engrossed, too noisy to hear him calling out. He’d get there and be accosted by the dog and reprimanded by Nina for not coming the day before like he said he would, and Tucker’s eyes would be wide with wild fear and even wilder hope, his actions helplessly muddled.

The door to what was the main laboratory was closed, so Ed knocked and then strained to hear an answer. There _could _have been movement inside, but he wasn’t sure. Unbidden, he remembered the jars stored in the next room over. All of Alexander’s dead siblings, bread to be research and discarded before they’d even had life. Ed pushed the thought out of his mind even as his skin crawled, and he stubbornly shoved the door to the lab open, despite not yet receiving an answer. The light was on inside, and there was a low hum of machinery, and it didn’t take long for him to notice Tucker, who was prepping something with his back turned to the door.

Not wanting to startle him, Ed loitered in the doorway and took a breath to announce his presence again. Some heave of movement and a noise caught his eye and he glanced to the left, the greeting still stuck somewhere in the back of his throat. And, for a long moment, the world simply froze as Ed struggled to comprehend what he was seeing. Alexander was strapped flat on top of a table and struggling weakly against his bindings, whining pitifully even though his muzzle was also bound tightly. A large section of his side was shaved neatly, and there was a trailing IV line that attached to a bag hung over a hat stand that Ed knew usually stood in the front entrance. There was a second IV bag next to the first, and Ed, still rooted to the spot in mute incomprehension, followed that line until his eyes found its end. In Nina’s arm, where she lay similarly restrained on a second table. Her eyes were on Ed, open and huge and leaking silent tears, but he could tell she was semi-concious at best.

“Oh, Edward.” Ed’s head snapped around to find Tucker looking at him, a small smile on his face. “I didn’t expect you until later.”

“What... the... hell?” Ed managed to grate out, heart beginning to thud. “What is this?”

Alexander managed to whimper his loudest yet, but his struggles were becoming less and less energetic by the second. Tucker glanced at him, and then back at Ed, and looked... sheepish. Nothing more devastated than purely _sheepish_.

“I know I’m running a little late, given that the board will be here in a few hours, but I only managed to fine-tune everything early this morning. So I’m still finishing up the last of the infusions, and then I’ll begin the write-up. Hopefully I can get it all done in time.”

“The...” Words failed him. Despite his brain warning him that this exact thing was happening – that all the evidence pointed toward Tucker doing his sought-after human experimentation on his wife two years ago – being met with the sight of Tucker calmly drugging and injecting his daughter and his dog was still too overwhelming for Ed to process. Nina looked _dead_. “What the _hell _have you done?”

Tucker’s smile slipped a little, and he studied Ed a little more closely. “A breakthrough, Edward.” Ed started to stutter out a question, a denial, an expletive, and Tucker sighed a little. “This field of research is being held back by people’s hesitation to do what needs to be done. And more people _understand _the possibilities; they’re just too cowardly to actually stand behind it. It’s why nobody is doing human trials, but nobody is backing the attempts to pass laws to make human chimeraism illegal. Or, oh...” He blinked a little. “Sorry. Were you asking specifically...? I put some of Nina’s bone marrow, mixed with stem cells from his biological siblings, into Alexander. Hopefully, he produces more of it that can be harvested, and fed to her. In her, I’ve put some of Alexander’s DNA, as well as some of her mother’s. Her mother’s pure DNA, that is, not the samples of the infused DNA I kept. I know it’s bad scientific practise to contaminate the secondary subject like that, but, unfortunately, I only have one of her and there’s no time to – ”

Ed didn’t remember deciding to move; he simply lunged forward with a sound of pain and fury that was almost inhumane and launched his Automail fist straight into Tucker’s face. Tucker had been expecting the attack even less than Ed, and went stumbling backwards, landing hard on his rump, glasses askew and face almost comically surprised. Blood gushed from his nose and Ed’s arm _throbbed_ even as his entire chest felt like it was incinerating in his horror and fury and anguish.

“Really, Edward – ”

“_Shut up_,” Ed bellowed, seething like he’d never seethed before. “You – you – you don’t get to say a _single word_. You’re experimenting on – You experimented on your _wife_. You actually – ! You’re the reason she left! You –” It dawned on him, even as he was yelling. “You killed her, didn’t you? Shit. Shit, ballsing shit. You _killed_...”

Tucker wiped at his nose with his shirt sleeve, looking away from Edward’s gaze. “I didn’t... I didn’t mean to. I just needed... She was a natural chimera, Ed. Swallowed her twin in the womb. And she – I didn’t _mean _to. But a dead body... Not when I’d just gotten so much breakthrough with her.”

“With her. _With _her.” Ed swore at him, not caring if Nina was in earshot, not caring that the words turned out half-choked because tears were welling up inside his throat. “You’re a _murderer_.”

“It was accidental. Really, Edward. I thought you’d understand this.” Tucker climbed to his feet.

Ed’s blood ran very suddenly cold. “What?”

“You’ve spent _months _here reading my research,” Tucker said, and he was actually _impatient_ as he frowned up at Ed in disapproval. “You’ve seen it all. We’ve _talked _about the benefits chimeras could have on the human population. Organ and tissue donation is only the very beginning – you said so yourself. We _need_ this.” Tucker shook his head. “Mankind's advances are the product of many experiments on humans, aren't they? If you're a scientist, too, then you should – ”

“No,” Ed denied, voice cracking again. “_No_. No, scientists –”

“Scientists – no. _Humans_ have a limitless desire to use their knowledge in real life. The desire to see what you can do with the power that is given to you... The desire to understand all the secrets in this world and to experiment with them. That is the _true_ nature of pure science.”

“You – you’re – this is your _daughter_. You sick son of – ”

“_Don’t_,” Tucker snapped, his scowl deepening, “start throwing around _names _like an ignorant idiot. Like you’re not in this field, too. Like – ”

“I would _never_ do this to a _child_,” Ed bellowed. “I would _never –_ ”

“And yet you say you’d do anything to help find a cure, or at least a good treatment, for people like your brother.” Ed reared back, eyes widening and heart sinking in guilt-dread-agony. “You’re the reason Al is going to be in pain for the rest of his life, you know.” Ed couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe properly past the pain in his chest. Tucker shook his head. “What’s the real difference between a rat and a dog? Between a dog and a human, especially when that human has the potential to cure so many? Should I care more because she’s genetically related to me? Or is that just good fortune – less red tape to get what we need?”

This time, there was a concious decision to move forward to punch the man. Tucker tried to dodge, but Ed had probably been in more fights in the last year alone than the professor had been in in his whole life. It felt... right, somehow, to feel the pain of his still-swollen port jarring as he slammed his Automail fist into Tucker’s jaw. So he did it again. Tucker’s glasses shattered under the metal of his fist and his arm ached and he didn’t care; drew it back and hit the man again. For his wife. For Nina. For Alexander. For all the others – because a person didn’t just _suddenly _escalate into murdering one’s _wife_, and Ed felt almost sickest of all thinking of all the nameless souls used, hollowed out and then discarded in this man’s search for glory. Maybe it had started out being about finding a cure, but Tucker himself had more than hinted at the fact that it had morphed into a search to be a deity. To grasp power and knowledge just for the sake of it. And damn who got in the way.

Nina bursting into tears – loud, gasping, retching ones – broke Ed out of his reverie. Tucker was bleeding properly on the ground, pinned beneath Ed’s knees, and he was shaking. Ed thought it was with fear, or maybe even tears, but then a giggle escaped and it was the last straw for Ed. That was one step too far into an evil that should only exist in bits and pieces in fiction. So he staggered to his feet and then staggered over to Nina, knowing enough about IV lines thanks to past personal experiences to get the line out of Nina’s arm quickly and with minimal bleeding. She didn’t even whimper when he ripped the tape off, and his worry for the glassiness of her eyes, still leaking huge, silent tears, skyrocketed.

“Hey, Nina. Come on. I’ve got you.”

She blinked at him, but didn’t move, leaving him to manoeuvre dead weight. “Ed...ward?” She lolled a bit like a ragdoll when he tried to sit her up. “You... g’na play... with me?”

“Sure,” he said, not even really sure of what he was saying. “Come on, Nina, grab on, now.”

“You hit Daddy...” she murmured, but finally obeyed and lifted her arms, so uncoordinated it almost looked grotesque. “Why’d....?”

“He was... he shouldn’t have done this, Nina. It was _wrong_. We – ”

Something loud happened, and Ed felt a small but powerful force slam into his shoulder. For a moment, his vision greyed out in the agony of his port being jarred that badly, and he came back to himself half sprawled over the table and Nina, who had collapsed back under his weight and was looking at him with blank shock. Ed thrust himself up using his flesh arm and whirled on Tucker, who had crawled into a corner beside a cabinet. There was a gun in his shaking hand, and Ed’s mouth went dry. The rush of fear was like a tidal wave, threatening to pull him all the way under into panic. And then, very suddenly, the panic was gone, and only absolute, eerie calm – calm like he hadn’t felt the whole day – settled on him.

“I’m takin’ her,” he said, and was distantly surprised at how his accent burred back to the countryside in that moment. “I’m takin’ her, an’ you can’ do _shit_ abou’ it.”

Tucker, no longer laughing, raised the gun shakily again. His aim was off – possibly due to the fact that his glasses lay shattered on the floor – but Ed still ducked instinctively out of the way. It was that same instinct that had him reaching for the hatstand, ripping Alexander’s IV bag off it and then throwing the thing as hard as he could in Tucker’s direction. Tucker threw up a hand to protect himself, but still let out a pained cry when the hatstand collided. Ed heard the gun clatter to the floor and slide a little as he turned toward Nina, but didn’t waste time looking at Tucker. Mind screaming at him to _run, run, run_, he roughly yanked her up and into his arms, where she luckily had enough sense to hold on.

The only slight pause Ed made on the way out the door was to glance at Alexander, still bound, and to whisper, “I’m so sorry.”

And then he booked it, stumbling on his sore Automail leg and struggling to compensate for Nina’s dead weight in his arms. _Just get to the door_, his mind commanded him in a voice that sounded eerily like Izumi’s. _Just get to the door, Ed, and he won’t be able to follow with the gun. He can’t shoot you out in public without it coming back at him. Just get to the door. _How he managed it was anybody’s guess, but he did. And then he just continued going, his shoulder getting soaked by Nina’s still-silent tears, mind finally starting to fog with incomprehension and horror and fear and the beginnings of an adrenalin crash.

He only really registered he’d boarded a bus when he was asked for his pass and Nina’s. Ed blinked at the conductor in a stupor, unsure of why he’d gotten on the bus, unsure of what bus it was, very aware that his pass wasn’t on him.

“Oh, just get on,” the driver said, and Ed finally recognised the man from weeks of travelling to and from the Tuckers’.

As Ed walked past, in a daze, beelining for the first seat on the thankfully empty bus, the bus driver called him something under his breath Ed would usually have taken great, and loud, offence to. A part of him noted in some surprise that he did not react. Even as he fell into the seat, Nina still clinging to his front like a baby koala, Ed’s phone rang. In another automatic action, Ed picked it up.

“’lo?”

“Still asleep, are we?” Mustang’s smug voice said over the other end of the line, and Ed would never, ever, ever admit it out loud, but his heart _lurched _with hope and relief. “After slacking all of yesterday. Can’t say I’m – ”

“Mustang. Tucker – Tucker. For his... his presentation today for the board... he... shit, Mustang...”

“I know you’ll want to go to Tucker’s, but we need to make up what you missed yesterday, Elric So I was calling to arrange that we –”

“_No_,” Ed yelled, and he was aware of the other heads in the bus turning to him. He lowered his volume, but the urgency was still there. “_Listen_. You have to – call the cops. Mustang.”

“Ed. What is going on?” Mustang’s voice had slipped into a tone Ed had never heard there before.

“I went – I went to check – I thought – I had an idea – It was crazy. I know it sounds crazy. But it was... it _is _crazy, but he really did it.”

“_Edward_. Slow. Down. Full sentences.”

“I went over to Tucker’s this morning. To help – with Nina. Before the presentation. I thought... I woke up this morning and things in his notes... they finally clicked for me. Oh, shit, Mustang... he killed his wife. Two years ago. He used her in the experiment that got him tenure. He was gonna use his kid. And her dog. I got there – I dunno what he’s already done to them. But I... I have her. I have Nina with me. We got out. He’s got a gun. Mustang, he might have already _done something to her_.”

In the ten seconds of silence that followed, Ed became suddenly sure that Mustang didn’t believe him. Something shrivelled and died, and, instead of letting the pain and loneliness that caused surface, anger came in its place. Ed opened his mouth, but Mustang beat him to it.

“Where are you?”

“Um... on a, um, bus.”

“Which bus, Ed? Look. Which bus is it?”

Ed blinked, and then looked. “I’m – oh. I’m on the route I usually take to the Hughes’.”

“Good. Stay on it. When you get to –”

Mustang’s voice cut out. Ed pulled the phone back and stared at it in surprise, and then cursed when he realised that the battery had finally given out on him. Uselessly, he tried to start it up again, but it didn’t get past the logo screen before it died again. With a sigh, Ed put the phone back in his pocket. And then startled at the sight of dried blood on the knuckles of his glove. He took the bloody glove off and then the other, and for once didn’t even spare a moment of thought about how obviously his hands didn’t match in that moment. Better staring at that than the blood on his hands. And _that_ almost startled a bark of slightly hysterical laughter out of him.

“Nina?” She didn’t respond verbally, but she did nuzzle more into his neck. “It’s... it’s gonna be okay, yeah? We’re going to my friend Gracia. I’ve told you about her. You’ll get to meet Elicia, finally. It’s all going to be okay. You two can play together today and... and... we’ll... we’ll figure it out.”

How much did she understand? What would happen to her now? Had Tucker done more than just drug her; was this illness that meant he should be rushing her to the ER instead? Ed just didn’t know. And he didn’t have a clue what anybody could do about the situation, because who the _hell _was going to believe his story? Tucker would have so much time to clean up the evidence. He’d probably spin the story so Ed attacked him and stole Nina. He was _dangerous_. He’d had a gun. He’d murdered at _least _one woman. And – shit, shit, shit. Ed was getting Gracia and Elicia involved as well. The emotions that had been held at bay until then welled up, and Ed lost track of everything except his breathing and trying to wrestle that day into something he could understand and process.

Gracia was waiting outside the block of flats when he staggered up, pale and wide-eyed. She rushed toward Ed when she saw him, and was just in time to stop his legs going out from underneath him.

“I’m sorry,” he panted, and he wasn’t sure if he was apologising for being held up by her or for bringing all the trouble to her in the first place.

“Roy called and explained. Let me take her,” Gracia said, softly, and then proceeded to coax Nina out of Ed’s arms. It took a while, because Nina, despite being mute in a way she’d never, ever been before, and loosely coherent at best, was still aware enough to not want to let go of Ed at all. But Gracia was Gracia, and her warm and gentle words and touches finally managed to get Nina into her arms. Held secure and safe. “Can you manage, Ed?” Gracia asked him, looking concerned, and Ed nodded.

He’d soldiered on through pain worse than what he was experiencing then, but was still slower and more lop-sided than usual as he followed Gracia to her familiar flat. Once inside, Gracia locked the door, and put the deadbolt on, and the sight was somehow incredibly comforting.

“She might – Gracia, I dunno what Tucker gave her. She could be...”

Gracia gently but firmly pushed Ed to the couch. “I know, love. I’ll handle her. You sit there and call Roy and we’ll sort this all out.” Ed stared at her, numbly, and she gave him a gentle push again. He obediently sat, and took the phone Gracia held out to him. The contact for _Roy Mustang _was already pulled up, so Ed hit call. It rang without answer the first time, and he didn’t bother with the voicemail; Mustang was probably busy, and would call back when he could.

Ed started when a steaming mug suddenly appeared in his vision. Gracia, free of Nina, was holding it out to him. “Drink this,” she coaxed and, when he’d taken it from her with a thanks, she reached out and pushed back his bangs very gently. “It’s going to be okay, Ed,” she soothed, and he very _freaking _nearly started crying right then, because it had been _so damn long _since anybody had done that for him. Izumi and Granny and even Winry tended towards the other spectrum when it came to showing their – genuine – love and affection, and so suddenly having Gracia there _stroking his hair_...

The phone rang, and Ed turned to it gratefully, swallowing down the lump in his throat. Mustang’s name was on the screen, and he put the phone to his ear.

“Gracia? Are they there?” Mustang sounded harried.

“It’s me,” Ed said.

“Good.” But there was _relief _undercurrenting through the clipped tone, and Ed was surprised by it. “Now. Start from the beginning. Properly. Tell me what we’re looking for.”

“We? Where are you?”

“Heading toward the Tucker house.”

“_What_? But you – Mustang! You’re not a cop!”

“No, but I’m friends with the Chief of Police.” Because _of freaking course _he was. “And I’m seeing to this personally.”

“_Why_?”

“Stop asking questions,” Mustang snapped, sounding a lot more like himself, “and start answering mine. What are we _looking _for, Elric?”

Balancing the tea on his Automail leg so the warmth would spread through his jeans a little into the ache, Ed began. “Start looking for his journals – or notes from the past two days. He uses a code, so papers that have references to sewing on it. You’ll want those. And –”

The tea was very, very sweet, and made him feel a bit more human. The phone got hot under his ear. The man Ed recognised as the nurse from Elicia’s school was let in and led toward Elicia’s room, where both girls presumably were. Gracia came around with crackers, at one point, and wouldn’t let Ed apologise, and Mustang, despite how much the call must be costing him, didn’t hang up once, even when all Ed had to listen to for swaths of time on end was the muffled sounds of background going-ons. Ed learned new ways to be grateful to people, that afternoon.

***

Ed had been raised by Izumi and Pinako, had grown up beside Winry, and had met Riza Hawkeye – Mustang’s... well, officially his _assistant, _but that covered only about half the work she overtly did for him and none of what they did outside of university jurisdiction – back when Mustang was only _looking_ to becoming Ed’s supervisor. In other words, he knew what the definition of a _terrifying woman _looked like in the flesh, and was used to being around said type of woman.

So when he assessed that London Chief of Police Olivier Armstrong scared the living _piss _out of him, he wasn’t just being melodramatic.

“So you were in that lab, with all the evidence laid out in front of you, and you decided to punch the man instead of take pictures. Or _any _other kind of evidence,” she snapped at Ed, lounging in the chair across from him and looking absolutely _disgusted _at his failure.

It made Ed flush with angry embarrassment, because the Hughes’ living room was _packed _with people – Armstrong and two other police, Mustang and Hawkeye in the corner, Al anxiously perched on the couch beside Ed, Gracia hovering in the doorway, keeping one ear on their conversation, one ear on Elicia playing in the master bedroom, and half an ear on Elicia’s room, where Nina was being questioned by two social workers. Despite the two looking friendly and kind enough, it was them Ed was most worried about; Nina hadn’t said more than two words since they’d left her house, and that never boded well when it came to welfare people wildly flinging about incorrect diagnoses and wrong opinions on where said diagnosed kids should go.

“I didn’t have _time_ to CSI the place,” Ed scowled, affronted.

Armstrong’s scoff was like the ring of a sword. “Right. Taking photos takes _much_ longer than decking a man repeatedly.” She scowled deeper at Ed. “We could have had this case cut-and-dry if you’d brought us things that bastard didn’t have time to dispose of and if you hadn’t given him the physical assault card to wave around.”

Ed’s heart sank. “He’s gonna just _get away with this_? You didn’t find _anything_? What good are you lot, then, you absolute shitty – ”

“Ed!” Al interjected, sharply.

“I am not,” Armstrong said, not shouting but with a sudden fury and power that made Ed snap his mouth shut and Al lean back a little into the couch, “going to let that piece of shit do anything except _rot _in jail. I’m good at what I do, Elric. It just would have been easier if you were helping me, and not trampling all over the place like a perfect bleeding replica of Mustang’s usual bumbling.”

It had been weird for Ed to witness Mustang not rising to an insult the first time Armstrong had laid into him in Ed’s presence, and the weirdness hadn’t dissipated when he refused to do it this time, either. He just kept his arms crossed and his gaze steady on Ed.

“Ed, if there’s anything else – ” Mustang started, and Armstrong actually held up a hand to silence him like a queen in a movie. Mustang blinked at her, but the tactic worked, so that was another point to her, if anybody was bothering to keep count of that any more.

“You’re sure he shot at you when you were standing next to the tables with the girl and the dog on them?” Ed nodded. “We found other places he dug bullets out trying to get rid of him, but no trace of that one.”

“Oh. _Oh. _Uh... I think... I think it’s in my arm.” Most of the room jerked in surprise, horror beginning to fill expressions. “The metal one!” he confirmed, hastily. “I didn’t think... but it might’ve gotten stuck in there...” He winced. “Winry’ll murder me if it damaged it...”

Al let out a noise and hauled himself to his feet, going to sit on Ed’s other side so he could pull Ed’s shirt up to look at the Automail arm. Ed twisted obligingly, and heard Al suck in breath through his teeth. “There’s a bullet here, yeah.”

“Did it wreck anything Winry will be really mad about?” Ed asked, anxiously, but he was ignored.

“Where’s that Knox grouch that was in here to look over the kid?” Armstrong demanded. “I’d rather have this done discreetly than at a hospital. And he looked marginally competent.”

It had come to Ed’s attention that afternoon that Elicia’s school’s nurse was another of Mustang’s friends from the war – how many friends in weird but suspiciously advantageous places did this man _have, _exactly? – and was qualified in things that school nurses didn’t need to know about. Including, apparently, drugs. He’d agreed to come in and look Nina over discreetly as a favour to Mustang, who was working with Armstrong to ensure no loophole or procedure would send Nina back into Tucker’s care. That included the hospitals being obligated to call a legal guardian of a minor – hence the shady home visits of the sullen man. But Mustang couldn’t get hold of him again, and Ed flat out refused to go to the hospital himself.

“Hosptials are shitty torture holes, and belong in the same hell as milk,” he snapped. “I’m not going near those places. Besides, every doctor I’ve ever met is too stubborn as_ shit_ to admit they don’t know their eye from their arsehole when it comes to Automail, so they just end up making an absolute tit of things ‘cause they’re trying to appear smarter than you.”

Armstrong tipped her head at him, eyes assessing. “And you’re under twenty-five. That’s the youngest people are _legally_ allowed Automail, isn’t it?”

“Youngest if it’s state funded or sanctioned,” Ed corrected. “I had everything from permission to creation to surgery to physical therapy to maintenance done by Rockbell Automail mechanics. They got permission to give it to me young, even if the permission was begrudgingly given, at best.”

His stare-off with Armstrong lasted another moment before she nodded, just once. Ed felt like he’d passed some sort of test. “If you video call your mechanic, can they talk one of us into taking a bullet out without damaging the Automail?”

“I – uh. Probably?” Ed said, not entirely sure if he was happy with this arrangement. “Who would... get it out?” He tried not to sound cagey about it, but Armstrong wasn’t a fool.

“Have any preferences?” she asked.

Al was the first name Ed thought of, but, inexplicably, his eyes turned to Riza instead of to his brother. He saw the surprise flicker across her face for a moment before it was gone and replaced by the calm he was used to. And that was why he picked her, he was sure; Ed had yet to find something that woman couldn’t do.

“I’ll call Granny and explain,” Al said, that same strange note in his voice that had been there since he’d arrived, pale and wide-eyed and too silent. Ed couldn’t get a proper read on him, and it was one of the things making him most nervous. What emotions was his usually expressive and warm brother hiding, and _why_?

And then his worry turned into howling, miserable guilt as Al had to struggle more than usual to stand; it had been a gruelling day on top of yesterday’s mess, and Al was obviously having a bad time of it. Tucker’s condemning words played through Ed’s memory like a poison he couldn’t refute, and it made him turn away from Al, feeling sick.

And that sick feeling climbed as Hawkeye settled behind him and helped him take off his shirt so he wouldn’t have to lift his aching Automail too high. He had trusted her even before she’d reassured Granny she’d taken out her fair share of bullets from flesh in her lifetime, but it was different trusting her to dig something out of him and another thing altogether to trust her – and everybody else – seeing him shirtless. He kept his eyes locked on a piece of the floor, but he could _feel _every single damn stare like a hot, heavy weight. And Riza was closest; able to see the intricacies of every scar. How the bolts of metal dug through flesh. And, because Mustang knew, she probably knew – it was, at the end of the day, mostly his fault. Sure, he’d done it to save Al, but Al wouldn’t have been in trouble in the first place if it wasn’t for him. Him and his stupid recklessness.

Ed flinched a little at Riza’s hand on his right shoulder that she put down to steady herself and him, and he could feel her hesitation so he muttered an apology and forced himself to stay very still. From where he sat holding the camera, Al unobtrusively reached around and grabbed the first bit of his brother he could find and _held on_. Riza made short work of getting the bullet out, Granny walked Ed through some motions and declared the shoulder dinged but satisfactorily intact, and Armstrong carefully bagged the bullet and made to sweep out of the flat.

“Hang on, hang on.” Ed wrestled his shirt back on, largely one-handedly. “Is that enough? Do you have enough to put Tucker away?”

“Luckily for you and your idiocy, Tucker is too much of an egotist and had too little time to destroy most of it. We’ll need to have actual analysts decode his work – your efforts won’t hold up in court – but after that... He’ll serve life. I’ll fight for it.” Ed nodded at her, conveying his thanks and relief and rage in that one motion.

“And... Nina? What happens to her?” Al asked, tentatively.

“Gracia is actually registered in our system as a foster parent,” one of the social workers – the woman, Mary or something – said, smiling kindly at Ed. “She and Maes –” There was a slight pause at the shiver of invisible pain that went around the flat. “Um, signed up to foster. And got all the approval, but then she fell pregnant with Elicia.”

Ed looked at Gracia, wild hope in him. “You wanna foster Nina?”

Gracia nodded, smiling slightly. “I think... I think she belongs here,” she said, and as cliché and sappy as it would have sounded from anybody else, from Gracia about Nina it made absolute sense.

“It’ll take a little to get the paperwork all approved, but we’ll... tug a few strings,” the social worker’s blonde male partner said with another smile.

Armstrong let out a loud scoff. “You’d better. Or tell my brother he will answer to _me_.”

Al and Ed shared a bewildered look. Gracia caught it and pressed her lips together to hide her smile. “Alex Armstrong – Chief Armstrong’s brother – is another friend from the war.” Ed was starting to think there was merit to the crackpot conspiracy theories about the British military, honestly. “He, uh...” Gracia glanced around. “The war was... harder on him, than most.”

“He got his arse kicked out in disgrace,” Armstrong snorted, sounding disgusted again. “First in our family to get a dishonourable discharge. And for refusing to fight, even. The _wanker_.”

“First thing he did when he was able was make himself as high up in the social work system as possible,” Mustang interjected, and there was a sad sort of smile on his face. “Save as many kids as he could. To make up for all the ones...”

He didn’t finish, but he didn’t need to. There was a very loaded pause, which the blonde social worker broke with the grace of a drunk careening into a stacked grocery display, loudly proclaiming that they had to get going, but they’d be back the next day for some final chats with Nina, this time not about getting evidence about the case, but about finding the best fit for a home for her, going forward.

Ed found himself tense and scowling the whole time, until the dark-haired social worker added, “We’ve already called in favours to ensure she can stay here for the evening. We’ll have to see what tomorrow brings – if you can keep her even with your paperwork being processed, what will happen until the court date is set, what things you’ll be required to get – another bed is definitely one, for example – and so on.”

Gracia nodded and gave her thanks. “For tonight, we’ll set them up with a blanket and pillow fort.”

“Great,” the blonde said with a grin. “Then the last thing for tonight is: who’s gonna take the dog?”

“Alexander’s _okay_?” Ed said, and relief a little staggering washed over him.

“He has to stay a few days at the vet’s, but they say there won’t be any complications, they don’t think,” Mary/Maria confirmed.

Ed couldn’t help but to start to laugh a little. Maybe everything would work out. Maybe, this time, everything wouldn’t go to absolute pieces and have to be painstakingly put back together again in a way that the cracks weren’t always glaringly visible.

***

That wish for organised, pretty resolution was the naive pipe dream of a person who didn’t know better like Ed did, he realised not three hours later, when Nina chose to suddenly change from wrong-quiet into absolutely ballistically loud when he and Al had tried to leave to go home.

“Nina, I’ll be back first thing in the morning, I promise,” Ed tried, throat constricted at the sight of her on her knees, sobbing hysterically, clinging to his legs.

She couldn’t even make coherent objections any more; simply heaved out the beginning syllables of words, nearly retching on her sobs. Elicia was standing, huge-eyed, in the corner, somewhat oblivious to Gracia’s comforting arms around her, while Riza and Hawkeye hesitated halfway out the door. Ed gave Al a helpless look, but, for once, even his brother didn’t know what to do. Al’s sorrow was another punch to the gut. Ed swung his eyes to Mustang, who looked back for a steady moment before turning to Gracia.

“I know it’s a lot to ask,” he began, sounding apologetic. “But do you think... one more person?”

“If Ed’s okay with our rotten old couch, I’d be happy to have him. I think... I really do think Nina should get to be with people who make her feel safe. But, Ed... You’ve been through a lot, love. We’ll make do if you decide to go.”

Ed appreciated the sentiment as much as the way she’d stroked her hair earlier, and he mustered up a smile for her even as he shook his head. “I’d like to stay, please.” And then he forced his smile wider, and his tone softer. “Look at that, Nina. You’ve successfully made a sleepover happen. This is Elicia’s first sleepover, isn’t it, Elicia?”

Startled, the other girl nodded, her gaze still locked onto Nina, instinctively _understanding _that kind of pain was the sort she didn’t see on the playground. The sort that she’d experienced, but didn’t at all understand. Suddenly, Elicia darted forward and kissed Nina on the forehead. Nina’s last sob ended in a gasp of surprise.

“I can’t clean it or put a plaster on it, but I can still kiss it better. Sorta,” Elicia proclaimed. And then held out her teddy. “You can hold Grumbles, if you want. He helps by giving good hugs.”

The only kids Ed had been as proud of as he was of Elicia in that moment had been Al and Winry when they’d all been younger. His chest positively expanded with it. Gracia, a little misty-eyed herself, declared she’d start the girls a bath and then help Ed set up the couch. Ed offered to clean the few dishes their shared pizza takeout had dirtied, and she gratefully accepted. And then, all that was left was to say goodbye to Riza, Mustang and Al.

“We can still drive you home, Al,” Riza said, firmly.

“Thanks,” Al said, but didn’t move at all. His gaze was fixed on Ed, that strangeness that had been there all day hanging about him. “Broth- Ed....” He hesitated. Riza loudly started talking to Mustang about work, ushering him further out of the doorway.

“What’s wrong?” Ed hesitated. “Are you... mad?” Had he handled things so terribly that Al was disappointed in him, as Armstrong had been?

Al looked at him as though he’d just spoken an alien language. “What? Edward.” His laugh was humourless and shaky. “Ed, you absolute wanker, you could have _died_. When Mustang called – before we knew anything...” To Ed’s surprised horror, Al’s eyes started filling with tears. “And then that bullet... if it hadn’t been... _Shit_, Brother. I – You’re all I’ve got, you absolute _tosser_.”

Ed put his hand on Al’s head and ruffled his hair, and Al limped forward and curled around Ed in a hug. “It’s okay, Al. I’m sorry. Alphonse, I’m sorry. I didn’t know – I would have texted you, if I’d known Mustang had called.” _This_. This was why Al was wrong, and leaving people in the dark as much as possible was better than telling them vague things they could do nothing about.

As often happened, Al seemed to read his thoughts. “We’re going to talk about this more,” he said as he pulled away, gaze hard and booking no argument. “Everything that you didn’t tell everybody else.”

“But I told them every–” Al silenced him with an unimpressed glare, and Ed had to look away. He’d told Armstrong and Mustang and the others everything of relevance. Tucker’s words – the ones that wouldn’t leave Ed’s head, the damning, truthful accusations – were still just between him and Tucker. And he didn’t want Al to know. Selfishly didn’t want his little brother to understand just how little he cared about him, when it all came down to it. “Get some rest Al. I can tell you’re knackered.”

“And you, Ed.”

“You are – you’re gonna be okay, right?”

Al had the gall to _scoff _at him as he carefully crutched toward where Riza’s voice was floating in from the hallway. “I’m _not _the Elric brother utterly, stubbornly hopeless at proper self-care,” he threw over his shoulder.

His grin when Ed gave him the _up yours _gesture was genuine, and some of the heaviness shrouding him had lifted when he said one last goodnight and closed the door. Ed locked it and bolted it behind them, just in case, and then went to wash the dishes and process as much of what had just happened while he did so.

***

Ed had _intended _to keep his promise to Al – he’d been tired enough to, at any rate – but Nina struggled to go to sleep, so Ed had sat with her half in the blanket and pillow fort that had been enthusiastically constructed in Elicia’s room until she finally, finally dropped off. He limped to the couch without bothering to figure out what to do without a toothbrush – that was the morning’s problem, honestly, and simply took his shoes off and loosened his belt before he flopped onto the couch and fell asleep, as slightly uncomfortable as the piece of furniture was to lie on.

It felt like he’d only been asleep for a few minutes when Nina, crying, woke him up. Ed didn’t want to take her back to the room until she was calm so that Elicia didn’t wake, and tried his best to sooth her. She fell asleep cuddled against him on the couch, and he didn’t want to try picking her up to carry her back to bed, wary of waking her, the lingering pain of his limbs and the new stiffness the couch had brought about. Somehow, he managed to drop off to sleep awkwardly draped around her, but she didn’t last long before she woke them both with a nightmare.

After being woken another five times – twice by his own dreams – Ed had given up and had simply sat, in a stupor, and had run the fingers of his flesh hand through Nina’s hair in a desperate rhythm. He’d fallen asleep again, eventually, but by the time Gracia and Elicia and Nina were awake and the first of Sunday’s visitors were set to arrive, Ed had barely gotten any sleep, and was grumpy, exhausted, sore and jumpy. Luckily for him – for everybody – Al was one of the first to arrive, with Riza and Mustang, and his _genius _little brother had brought clothes and a toothbrush and a little container of painkillers. Ed emerged from the shower feeling more human and slightly less stiff and sore, despite Gracia’s shower not having a shower chair. He was chugging coffee when the social workers showed up.

Maria and Denny Brosh had met on the job, they explained, cheerfully, and still loved what they did – and the man they worked for – so much that they’d committed to breaking up if Armstrong had asked them to choose between their relationship and the job. As it was, he’d cried when they’d nervously told them they were dating, and had been one of Denny’s best men at their wedding. This was just one of the many airy, cheerful stories the two told as they all sat together in the Hughes’ living room. Ed couldn’t relax, knowing that it was all a farce; easy interaction that was _actually _them both _assessing _Gracia and Nina. And waiting around to hear anything new about the case. And slowly but surely trying to coax Nina, who was actually talking quite a bit that morning, into telling them more about what her dad had done to her. He knew they were just doing their jobs but... he couldn’t trust them. And _hated _the deception, even if it was _supposedly _for a good cause.

Eventually, they did get Nina to start talking a bit more about what had happened, and Graica brightly took Elicia to have a quick walk to get more milk, of which they still had plenty. Nina felt more comfortable having Ed and Al around, so they sat through her version of the events. The heavy anger and stomach-deep sickness Ed felt at her innocent way of trying to make sense of all that had happened – she’d offered to help in every way she could. She’d been _excited _about _helping Daddy_ and Ed briefly found himself wishing for the death penalty before personal conviction returned to him – was mirrored on everybody’s faces. Even Mustang’s, and Ed knew how the man usually kept everything except a smirk and sarcastic disappointment well-hidden.

But the face that he could see that twisted him the most was Riza’s. She remained as calm as ever, but there was an _expression _on her face that Ed couldn’t explain. And then, suddenly, he did understand it, even if he couldn’t read its exact contents any better. So he excused himself, quietly, when Elicia and Gracia returning wrapped up the harrowing retelling, and went to the kitchen to make two cups of tea. Nobody noticed him as he slipped to Riza’s side and quietly offered her the second mug. She startled a little, and gave him a baffled look that made him suddenly very embarrassed by his stupid little attempt to make her feel better.

“Thank you, Ed. That’s very kind of you.”

A part of him wanted to slink away and not have to explain himself, but her eyes were still... Like Al’s. Like Nina’s. Like his, if he _had _to admit it to himself. So he raised his own mug, gave her a smile that he was sure was equal parts brittle and vicious, and said, “It’s a special perk for those in the Brilliant Scientist, Absolute Shit Shitty Father Club.”

Her eyes widened again. And then Doctor Berthold Hawkeye’s daughter smiled a brittle, vicious smile back at him. “Cheers.” They clinked mugs, and she moved closer so their shoulders pressed together, for just a moment. “May there never be _any _more members added.”

“I’ll drink more than tea to that,” Ed agreed.

***

Gracia’s suggestions that Ed go to Elicia’s room to sleep turned very firm and non-negotiable when Ed fell asleep sitting up on the couch, and he was embarrassed enough and still tired enough that he complied with her wishes. The blanket fort was still up, and Ed stumbled into it and buried himself in the softness. And then, of course, he found he was too tired to fall asleep, not even after reciting the periodic table a couple of times. Irritated, he yanked out his phone and found Elicia’s – fluffy, purple – headphones and returned to the mass of pillows, hoping that music of some kind would lull him to sleep as the voices in the living room had. After aimlessly scrolling through music, he turned to Al’s recently played, but found only podcasts. So he looked up Winry instead, whose music taste was as varied and specific as a potluck dinner. There were a few new songs on her _recently played_, but the first, titled only ‘2002’, was so instantly pop-y that Ed winced outright and stopped the music at once. And then he noticed the most recently-added song was something by Linkin Park, which was odd even for Winry, and had been played no less than forty-three times in the past day alone. Suitably curious, Ed clicked on ‘The Messenger’ for a listen.

It was far more acoustic than he was expecting from the band he only knew by reputation, but it made more sense to him why Winry would know the song. And then the lyrics started registering, and Ed tensed. And then relaxed into a choked little laugh, realising that _somehow _Winry had meant him to find that song. “When life leaves us blind, love keeps us kind.” Shit. _How _she’d figured he would find it, and how much she knew about the situation, he wasn’t sure. But he knew she’d done this for him as surely as he knew her favourite colour and the tree-climbing scar on her shoulder and how she picked out the herbs from her food.

Ed put the song on repeat, and let himself be rather melodramatic and emo, lulled to sleep by a very emotional, sentimental song that _was _starting to break down the hard, cynical shell that still came far too easily to him.

The song was still playing when he woke about an hour later, and Ed groggily switched it off and pulled himself to his feet to use the bathroom. The sound of his name coming from the living room, however, made him instinctively freeze in his tracks.

“I really just wish Edward would... support us a bit more,” Maria said, tone slightly hesitant. “Nina takes all her cues from him, and so his... uh... reticence?” she tried. Ed heard Mustang snort with laughter. “He hasn’t done anything wrong. And he _has _been polite,” she hastened to explain, and Ed realised she was probably talking to Al. “But it’s just... you can _feel _it. And Nina can, too. And we need her to trust us. Do you think you can ask Ed to... not _pretend_, but just... be more overtly supportive?”

There was a long beat of silence. “I’ll talk to him,” Al said, slowly. “But...” Al sighed. “He _will _warm up to you two. Ed just – needs time.”

“We don’t have that luxury right now, Alphonse,” Mustang said, firmly. “Elric – Ed – can’t be childishly impolite over something this important.”

Ed willed Al to just take it – to just let them think it was just another part of his bad way with most people – but Al was never one to back down from defending Ed when he thought Ed needed defending. Ed’s heart sank as he realised Al was going to go all _tragic backstory _on them, but before he could decide whether interrupting right then would be worse or better, Al barrelled _right _in with a punch to the gut. Al hid it better than Ed did, but the devastating social bluntness was an inherited Elric trait.

“Our dad left when Ed was five and I was four. I think he explained things to Mum, from what I can remember – she never seemed very... put off about it all. Used to say it was for _important science things_ whenever anybody asked. Not even a year later, she died.” Ed could still hear the little crack in Al’s voice, and his heart ached with it. “Neither Mum nor Dad had any siblings or living parents, and nobody could find trace of Dad anywhere.” That dirty, rotten bastard of a man. “At first, we got to stay over with the neighbours – the Rockbells. They thought it would just be for a few days while they tracked down Dad. But then Dad didn’t turn up, and people said we couldn’t stay with Granny Pinako any more, because she wasn’t a registered foster parent and was already looking after her granddaughter, Winry. Winry’s parents were in Doctors Without Borders, before they passed.”

Al paused for just a moment. “So we got put into the foster care system. I... don’t remember much. A little because I was so small, and a lot because Ed... Ed never _let me see_. But I remember enough to know that... Well. We were moved around a lot. There was one night he woke me up in the pitch darkness, our bags packed, and got us on a bus back to the Rockbells’. Granny Pinako didn’t even yell at him after she saw the bruise on his face. We finally got a break – the Curtises are both _amazing_, lovely people, and the social worker who led us to them was also very nice and helpful. But then... then I got diagnosed. And Ed... um... had the accident. And the Curtises both _knew _Ed and I would both be better under Granny’s care – she _specialises _in that, you know?

“But, for some reason, people just... fought us at every turn. Even when Ed was recovering – he was so _sick _those first few weeks after the surgery... And they wanted to take him away and put us both in a home, right then and there, with him so feverish and sore. It was just... I still don’t _understand_ it. It’s one of the main reasons Ed chose to do most of his undergrad long-distance. He wanted to be home to help fight me being pulled into the system. Well, that and everybody was wary of letting him lose on a university campus at fifteen. They just... I know they probably thought they were doing the right thing getting me to a... special home but... they really weren’t. So, um, we met a few really great social workers in our lives, and we know they exist but... But Ed’s going to just... need some time. Please.”

It was the word of a polite request, but Al’s tone made it perfectly clear that it was an order – a warning. One that Maria and Denny both verbally agreed to right then, their voices subdued. That was one of the reasons Ed, when he’d waited the appropriate amount of time so they wouldn’t know he’d been eavesdropping, tried to be a bit nicer to them both when he rejoined the group in the living room. They did seem like genuinely nice people – he would have trusted them far more if he didn’t know their profession. If he didn’t remember how close he’d come to losing Al to some _home _somewhere. If he wasn’t scared they’d try to do the same to Nina, when Gracia and Elicia were _right there _and perfect to love her and help her, even in the difficult things.

“You didn’t hear this from us,” Maria said, as she and Denny were getting ready to go for the day, “but Mr Armstrong... Well. We’re willing to be a little... uh... clumsy with our paperwork, if need be. If this is the best place for Nina, which we are all agreeing it really is.”

And that made Ed grin at her properly for the first time. “If you need any help, let me know.”

It was meant as a joke, but Maria looked him in the eyes, smiled and said, “Thank you, Ed. I appreciate that.”

Al ducked his head to unsuccessfully try to hide his soft smile.

***

Even knowing Nina was safe and well looked-after with Gracia, it was _horrible _leaving her that evening, and not just because she pitched another tantrum. Gracia handled it very well, and got Nina mostly calm in the end, but Ed still found himself promising he’d be over first thing in the morning. Elicia got a little jealous when she heard Nina wouldn’t have to go to school, but would instead have Ed staying with her at the house all morning, and Gracia handled _that _tantrum with aplomb, too, even though Ed could see the strain just behind her eyes.

“We’ll sort it out. The first few days of anything new like this are the worst,” she reassured them all as she walked them to Riza’s car. “We’ll sit down as soon as I know more info, Ed, and work out the details – where Nina will be going to school, what afternoon things she has, how much extra to pay you now that there’s the both of them.”

Ed shook his head firmly enough that his braid swung over his shoulder. “Nope. I’m definitely not letting you pay me more. It’s basically the same amount of work I’ve _been _doing,” he said, stubbornly, when she tried to interject. “It’s actually _saving _me trouble, and bus fare, because they’ll be in one place and not across the bloody city from one another.”

Gracia hesitated, searching his face. “We’ll see,” she said, and Ed nodded, knowing he’d stand his ground on this issue, and knowing that Al would back him on most of it while still being a mother hen about what Ed saw as impeccable time management.

“If things get crowded in the flat, you’re welcome to use my place every now and then,” Riza offered as she unlocked the car. “I’m sure the dogs will be happy to have company while I’m still at work. Especially Alexander.”

Ed snapped around to stare at her. “You’re... You’re adopting...?” Riza smiled and nodded, and Ed had to actually fight the urge to _hug _her. “That’s... thank you. That’ll mean so much...”

He trailed off, awkwardly, realising how stupid it was that he was thanking her for a dog that wasn’t even his. But nobody, not even Mustang, called him out on it. In fact, Mustang surprised the hell out of Ed as they got stuck at a red light.

“You did a really good job, Ed. That kid... she’s okay because of you.”

Ed’s throat closed up. “Don’t act like you’re actually proud, you bastard,” he tried to growl. “You’re just happy this will make your career even better – child prodigy you managed to snap up to be your PhD candidate unearths illegal human testing in a visiting professor’s basement.”

“It really does give me so much leverage,” Mustang said, cheerfully.

And yet, Roy paid for the pizza they decided to order, and Ed found it far less weird than he should have to have Riza and Mustang in his living room on a Sunday evening, making Al laugh. Maybe more had shifted on that strange graveyard visit with Mustang than Ed had realised. Maybe things had shifted far before then. Mustang’s passing shots that Ed was going to make up what he was missing while _playing tea party _the whole day tomorrow were met with token snarling from Ed that had no heat behind it. Riza gave him and Al both a hug at the door, and he wondered how safe it felt to be hugged by a woman he knew still carried a gun with her everywhere.

Ed wasn’t sure how his life had gotten that way, but he wasn’t... entirely sorry it had.

“I know you’re tired, Brother.” Al was standing between him and the door to his bedroom, looking determined. “But you promised we’d talk.”

“Al... can’t we leave it for...”

“When? For _when_?”

“It’s not... it’s fine. It’s just... it just freaked me out a little.”

“How? What are you feeling?”

Ed shot his brother an exasperated look. “You’re seriously going therapy on my arse right now? Didn’t we have enough of that mandatory shit as kids?”

“That ‘mandatory shit’ helps, Ed. Especially if it’s to somebody you trust.” And Al gave him the most obvious puppy eyes ever, setting things up in a way that Ed couldn’t escape from. Still, he tried, rebelling against the notion of Al finding out the truth. He got dismissive. And then angry. And then distant. And Al held on with the tenacity of a bulldog. “Brother...” Al sighed and rubbed his face, and the look he gave Ed next was much more devastating than the puppy eyes in its raw sorrow and love. “I could have lost you. We could both have lost Nina, who I care about, too. And it’s... I know when something’s eating at you, okay? I’ve never... I’ve... I’ve never pushed about the Automail stuff, because you have Winry and Granny. But, Brother... I know you’re trying to protect me, but it’s just_ hurting_ me, seeing you hurting and not being able to help.”

“You knowing won’t help; it’ll only make it worse because you’ll know, too!”

“And me helping you carry it won’t make it better? Why? Because I’m unable to process it? Unable to comprehend? To weak, stupid, fragile?”

“Al, shut up.”

“What is it, Ed?”

“_Stop it_.”

“No,” Al snarled back, and met Ed’s angry glare with a determined one of his own.

Winry calling broke up the stalemate. Granny was more on Al’s side, believing that telling people _just _what they needed to know about a dire situation would help rather than hinder, which meant that she’d rung Winry up with the news she had. Besides, Winry explained, trying too hard to be casual, she might have had to rush to fix Ed’s Automail, anyway, so she _had _needed to prepare for a potential sudden departure. Al dutifully played camera man to show her Ed’s Automail for herself, and she was a lot more relieved to see it – and him, he knew, though she’d never say – in one piece.

“Thanks for – uh. The song.” Al raised an eyebrow at him, and Ed refused to admit he was blushing a little.

“Oh. Um. Y...yeah. I just... It helped me a lot when... And I just thought, after Granny called and told me...” Ed realised, with horror, that her voice was thick with tears. She made a valiant effort of clearing her throat without them figuring out she was crying. “I didn’t know if you’d... find it. But I just... left it playing on my phone with the volume off in my locker while I worked. In case.”

Al’s look turned very, very smug. Ed ignored that, too. “I found it. I... Yeah.”

“Yeah,” she echoed, but it was soft. “Call me if the arm gives you trouble, yeah?”

Al let him shower and brush his teeth before he cornered Ed again, and they went to bed mad at each other. So, when he couldn’t sleep after nearly two hours of trying, Ed crept to Al’s room.

“Al?” he whispered.

“Yeah, Brother?” Ed hesitated, dithering, and Al slowly rolled over, leaving space beside him on his mattress. “Ed. Please?”

So Ed climbed into his bed and told the little splotch of light on the ceiling from the outside streetlight shining through the cracked curtain all Tucker had said. The truth Tucker had told. Al rolled over onto him, crushing him close fiercely, angrily.

“Oh, _Ed. _We both promised,” he said, desperate and angry and _sad_. “Remember? We both _promised _we’d never cross the line. Not even for cures.”

“We were just kids when we said that,” Ed mumbled.

“It doesn’t make it less true.”

“No,” Ed said, softly, after a while. “I guess... not.”

“Ed... I don’t want anything if it’s at the expense of you. _Please_. Promise me again. We’re not _just kids_, now.”

Ed started out laughing, but it wasn’t fully happy, and Al’s face against his, when he curled around Ed more, wasn’t entirely dry. “Yeah, Al. Okay. I promise. No crossing the line. But no giving up, either.”

“’Course not.”

“Are you – can I go back to bed?”

“No,” Al yawned. “’Night, Brother.”

“Idiot.” Ed shifted into a slightly more comfortable position. He promised the night that Tucker was wrong; they were nothing alike, and he wouldn’t be the reason Al remained in pain for forever. And Nina, Elicia, Gracia, Alexander – he’d be there to look out for them, too. In every way he could. And, as he drifted, Ed made one more sleepy, silent promise to Winry, too; no more making her cry for bad things. Only tears of joy of some kind. “Night, Little Brother,” he slurred into that same dark. And that was also, in its own way, the oldest promise he’d made, and one he definitely still intended to keep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just for funsies, those two songs I worked in here with the grace of a newborn rhino: 
> 
> ['2002' by Anne-Marie.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tvLIhEaEKo)  
['The Messenger' by Linkin Park. ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ec2RlGgNIUs)


End file.
